THE HERMIT OF CAPRI 




Class 

Book 

Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







THE HERMIT 




OF CAPRI 




BY > 




JOHN STEVENTON1 




ILLUSTRATED 




® 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 




M C M X 












v & 



Copyright, 1910, by Harper & B 

All rights reserved. 
Published March, 1910. 


ROTHERS. 



CI.A259705 



Illustrations 



WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING 

HOME*' Frontispiece 

"THE LIGHT THAT FAILED" .... Facing p. 14 
THE GOLDEN MADONNA, CHAPEL AND 

HERMIT " l6 

MONTE TIBERIO AND RUINS OF VILLA 

jovis . " 34 

"and he, a hermit!" ...... " 52 

"good-bye, capri !" " 132 






The Hermit of Capri 



The Hermit of Capri 



Capri, Italy, October 3, 190-. 
(Sunday night.) 

My dear : 

You may fill the blank. Let me thank 
you for the kind wishes you were pleased to 
express for me in your note received on the 
steamer at sailing. You have been ever 
good to me, and I left my native land feeling 
that I had a fellow-traveller, for you said you 
would "follow" me. 

I shall try to keep my promise to write to 
you, so that you may know that I am "all 
right." It is needless to tell you of the 
usuals of the voyage: the ever-widening 
ocean, the great ship, the passengers of low 
and high degree, the passing ship on the far 
1 



horizon, the tick-tack of the Marconi, the 
betting on the day's run, the Captain's dinner 
on the eve of arrival, and the glad steaming 
into the Bay of Naples. Then Naples, with 
its rocky, narrow streets; its beautiful, calm, 
alluring bay; its treasure-house of all sorts of 
fascinating, creeping things, etc. The "etc." 
covers a multitude of voices — singing, bray- 
ing, crowing, bleating voices; and the mourn- 
ful cry of the brush-and-broom man goes up, 
the wandering echo of them all — a wailing 
Jonah. 

Standing on the balcony of San Martino, 
high on the summit of the cliff-brow north, 
the city below — with its flat roofs and warty 
chimney-pots, its threads of streets, its swell- 
ing domes here and there — curves along 
the bay shore, on the left to Portici and 
Vesuvius, on the right to Posilipo, with 
Castello Dell Ovo in the centre projecting 
into the bay as the handle of a Cupid's 
bow. 

But I merely disembarked at this former 
capital of a kingdom on my way to Capri, 
which lies south across the bay — a great 
leviathan of stone guarding its entrance and 
bearing my hopes of rest as well. 

2 



"And yonder, bluest of the isles, 
Calm Capri waits; 
Her sapphire gates 

Beguiling to her bright estates." 

There remains with me the abiding picture 
of you as, on that warm September afternoon, 
you turned and walked away so straight and 
dainty "all in white samite," your five-feet- 
five really appearing to grow taller in your 
departing distance, your wheat-gold hair 
more golden in the glowing sunset. I had 
said: "Good-bye. God bless you." And you: 
"How shall I know that you are — are all 
right?" And I, again: "I will write, if you 
will permit." You had bowed with a smile 
of assent in your moist, clear gray eyes. It is 
to that departing figure, under the rose of that 
smile and to those honest eyes I write. We had 
spoken of many things as we walked : of your 
ambitions in your profession, your love for 
the children you taught, your misgivings as 
to your ability to accomplish the good you 
desired, and, finally, you left me to infer from 
your exclamation, as we neared the gate of 
your home, "Oh, I want to be doing some- 
thing in the world, to take my part!" that 
3 



you contemplated the possibility of your 
abandonment of the work which you had 
often said you felt to be your "calling," 
to yield to that universal beckon of Nature 
to her children; but at whose special behest 
you left me to imagine. I was not left in 
doubt that there was some one, yet in those 
maidenly eyes came a forbidding mist as a 
veil through which I might not intrude. 
Our parting had come — had it not ? And 
so, I, lonely, among the crowd of passengers 
on the liner, remembered the vision and 
our talk of many things, and, oh, I do not 
like your Mr. Call — or whoever that "some 
one" is! 

But come with me to Capri and forgive in 
me whatever needs to be forgiven. You 
never got into a " wobbly-calf" skiff at the 
Naples landing and were rowed by a barefoot 
fisherman to the bay steamer, where you 
mounted the rope-balustered ladder to the 
deck, and there, while the steamer waited, 
threw coins to the amphibious divers who, 
treading water, appealed for "awn franc," 
and, many francs being thrown edgewise into 
the blue waves, dove many a fathom deep, 
brought up the francs, put them in their 
4 



mouths until from many divings their cheeks 
bulged with the enormous quid ? No ! You 
have been too busy in your ten years' "call- 
ing," and have had no time "to go abroad 
far countries for to see." Then "follow me, 
full of glee," across the bay in the warm 
October morning, the blue waters glistening, 
the gulls flying, the little band of mandolin, 
guitar, and triangle musicians on the deck 
playing Maria, Mari and Addio la Bella 
Napoli for your lire, until you pass mandarin- 
groved Sorrento, the broken baths of Agrip- 
pina, the Bocca (or mouth) between the Sor- 
rentine peninsula and Monte Tiberio — the 
leviathan's head of sheer rock-cliff rising a 
thousand feet above the sea — and, disembark- 
ing, come to Marina Grande, where your 
two-hundred-pound trunk is taken on the 
head of a Capri lady, who, in her bare feet, 
patters along the stone wharf with it to the 
omnibus, while the strong men, hotel porters, 
wrestle with your hand-bag and umbrella. 
Thus "Johnny comes marching home!" 
Then you are terraced up by many a zigzag 
winding way five hundred feet to the saddle 
of the island — the piazza of the town of 
Capri. 

5 



I am alone in Capri, though I make believe 
you have followed me. 

You ask me (in your steamer note): "Tell 
me the truth, why you go so far away 'for 
rest , ? ,, You think with Naaman, the leper, 
who, when Elisha prescribed that he should 
wash himself in Jordan, said: "Are not 
Abana and Parphar, rivers of Damascus, 
better than all the rivers of Israel ?" Capri 
is my Jordan and the bathing is healing — 
for me, I hope. Here are eight hundred 
species of flora, and "the nightingale sings 
here all the night long." Even if here, per- 
chance, one should happen, accidentally, to 
die, no funeral director with trappings of 
woe would funereally direct, but the Brothers 
of Misericordia, in white gown and mask, 
would silently come and on their shoulders 
bear what remained to the church of San 
Stefano and thence to the little cemetery. 

But, my dear, wise, Little Teacher, you may 
not understand that of necessity — Necessity, 
that great God of some philosophic clay- 
eaters — I must veil the truth, for, in my case, 
it is ugly. Should I not have adopted the 
grammar of the mythologists and spoken of 
"It" as a goddess? The ultimate Truth is 
6 



Beauty. You remember Bernini left unfin- 
ished his statue of Truth in the vestibule of 
the Bernini palace, in Rome. None but the 
sculptor himself can say what was his ulti- 
mate design for the perfect statue of Truth. 
None but the Artist of the Universe can imag- 
ine the perfected Truth. Only He sees the 
end from the beginning. What is Truth ? 
"Pilate therefore said unto Him, 'Art thou 
a King?' Then Jesus answered: 'Thou 
sayest that I am a King. To this end have 
I been born and to this end am I come into 
the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the Truth heareth 
my voice/ Pilate said unto him: 'What is 
Truth ?' And when he had said this, he went 
out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them: 
'I find no crime in him." : Whatever ap- 
prehension of the wisdom which passeth 
reason Pilate gathered from the informing 
eyes of his prisoner, in answer to "What is 
Truth ?" he was satisfied with silence. 

I suppose you went to church this morning. 
Wherever you went you found a noble "body 
of truth," but the whole, perfect truth has 
its face turned toward the infinite — the in- 
finitely beautiful. 

7 



You will be patient with my evasion of 
your solicitous questioning (for which thanks !) 
while I tell you a little story, for I, too, have 
been to church, and, "edified" by the earnest 
simplicity of the eloquence of the priest- 
preacher, which rapt the attention of the 
simple folk and of my lord and lady, have 
heard an angel sing. 

There at the organ — "the very best in 
Italy," say the Capri people — sat an old, 
brown-gowned man, and played with that 
delicate touch, that sensitive feeling of accord, 
which is the distinctive quality of one "play- 
ing by ear." As the notes stole lingeringly 
from beneath his fingers and rose jubilant to 
escape and soar, his tenor voice winged high, 
clear as a silver bell, melodious as a flute 
heard over wide waters, with the appealing 
cadence of Schubert's Serenade, filled chapel, 
transept and high-groined arch with a rich- 
ness and quality of sound which, in its effect, 
I can only compare to the sense of that light 
"like a lily in bloom" within which Abou 
Ben Adhem " saw an angel writing in a book 
of gold"; and there, out of his very soul sat 
my seraph in brown pouring out his voice 
of gold, "a voice above singing." 
8 



In a side aisle, by one of the great pillars, 
stood a woman straight and tall; her face, 
under the cowl-like scarf worn over her head, 
"as it were the face of an angel," with joy- 
tears trickling in an ecstasy of release down 
her aged cheek. 

The worshippers, at first joining in the 
anthem, ceased to follow, and, I do not know 
why or how, I found myself with them, all 
silent, impulsively to have risen; and we all 
stood immovably attent on the voice of the 
singer. Then, coming tremblingly with a 
few broken chords to the descendo, he ceased. 
There was a hushing sigh from the parted 
lips of the upturned faces as the singer bowed 
over the keys, his face in his hands. The 
people stood still a few moments, one not 
looking at another, and then, as in a daze 
of awakening, melted away. The woman 
caught up her scarf more closely about 
her face, halted hesitatingly in the shadow 
of the pillar, furtively yet longingly gazed 
on the bowed figure, then went swiftly 
out. 

Do you not think we worshipped ? Ah, 
so well: we in the melody to which the music 
had keyed us, that in which all nature finds 
9 



a note; but she, I was sure, in the singer as 
well. 

I can understand you when, in our graver 
talk, you said: "I have no religion, but am 
very religious." You acknowledge no dog- 
matic creed as your rule of conduct, yet are 
reverently devotional to the truth. What was 
it St. Paul said? "The Truth shall make 
you free." That is, Truth is not bond of any 
creature or fashion, is not of man's making, 
wears no garments of semblance; is naked! 
The Decadent seeks Truth because she is 
naked. Yet we must need, however vainly, 
to personify Truth as a help to the imagina- 
tion — a mental and moral hitching-post. The 
test of a Saviour of mankind is that His 
teaching of Truth shall be of universal applica- 
tion, or constitute a universal religion, so that 
each man, as he has his several need, finds 
himself included; and that such a Saviour 
in His life on earth shall be the highest 
example of that teaching, He must be both 
song and singer. 

Your "good wishes" have followed me 

so far (thank you again), and, having them, 

I am not lonely, although in a strange 

land among strangers with which and 

10 



with whom I shall try to acquaint myself 
and you. 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, November 2, 190-. 



My dear : 

Never was realized by me the force of the 
simile, "Like good news from a far country," 
until your dear letter came (forgive the last 
adjective, although it is my own). I can now 
appreciate that "blessings brighten as they 
take their flight," when their flight is of 
several thousand miles from you to me. 

You ask me to "explain" myself. It is 
hard to conceive how so simple a person as I 
am requires a foot-note or an appendix. May- 
be you intended the demand as a challenge- 
preliminary requiring a retort-courteous. In- 
deed, I do not call to mind any ambiguity in 
me worth explanation. 

You also, in that connection, again ask 
me why I should leave my clients and my 
life-work to go "so far away." Let me tell 
11 



you something about Capri, and you shall 
judge whether it is not as interesting as a 
law-office and as cheerful as a court-room. 
Why it should be so to me "is another story" 
— which, perhaps, as an envoi, you may 
"know by heart." But, quilps and quiddi- 
ties discarded, I came to explain, if not an- 
swer, to myself certain questionings which 
have so persistently demanded attention that 
I had to beat a' retreat or be utterly routed. 
It may be that for me, even yet, "Care sits 
on the crupper of the horseman." However, 
if anywhere, "Earth hath no sorrow that 
Capri cannot heal." Here amid vineyards, 
and orange, lemon, and olive groves, the rose 
blooms all the year around, and the narcissus, 
the morning-glory, and camellia unfold. 

A friend tells me a part of the story of it. 
From earliest times it has been noted for 
its mild winters and cool summers. The 
Nereids, affrighted by passing ships, took 
shelter here, and the song of the Sirens on 
the adjacent rocks could be heard by the 
native Teleboans as Ulysses sailed past. 
Virgil peopled it with (Ebale, child of Telon, 
and the nymph Sabethes. Augustus Caesar 
built palaces there — a palace for each of the 
12 



twelve gods. Then came Tiberius, and erect- 
ed and inhabited Villa Jovis on the high- 
jutting eastern promontory of the island. 
Tiberius chose Capri for his retreat from the 
cares which infested his day, because it was 
accessible only by a narrow beach, being it- 
self on all sides a precipitous cliff surrounded 
by a deep sea. In his Villa Jovis, Tiberius 
entertained astrologers and learned Greeks; 
Caligula, then a somewhat nice young man, 
lived with him; and there Vitellius, as a youth, 
had dreams of wild oats. There the poisoners 
of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, were brought, 
tried, tortured, and dropped out of the back 
door — a straight fall of a thousand feet to their 
sea graves. That same fall was also "a drop 
too much" for a fisherman who surprised 
the noble Emperor, as Suetonius says, "in a 
lark." Here the old gentleman "got a fall" 
on his gardener for stealing a peacock from 
its roost in the imperial orchard, and here the 
supervisor of highways, who did not keep 
the roads in good order, was Tarpeianed. 
It is said that Crispina, wife of Commodus, 
and Lucilla, his sister, "were exiled to 
Capri before disappearing from the world." 
People who visit Capri in these days acquire 
i3 



a habit of "disappearing from the world"; 
that is, because Capri becomes all the world 
to them. 

The ruins of Villa Jovis yet rear themselves 
as a monument to the rage for building in the 
old Roman days. Near by is the ancient 
lighthouse, of which a writer of the time says: 
"The lighthouse, rival of the wandering 
moon, sheds its rays sweet to anxious ships." 
The house yet remains, but it is "The Light 
that Failed." 

My friend also says that the Muse once 
dwelt in the olive groves of Capri, for 

"Artheneus tells us of Bkesus, quoting a 
line of his poetry: 

'"Pour out for me now seven measures of the 
best sweet wine/ 

"This is the one articulate cry of ancient 
Capri which has come across the ages to us." 

Capri Blanco and Capri Rosso are wines 
famous for their healthful purity; and, in 
recent times, they well may have lent their 
potency to the after-dinner enthusiasm of a 
notable painter, a visitor, who walked out 
with his fellow-diners on the favorite (and 
only level) promenade, the Via Tragara, to 
1.4 



the Punta Tragara. There he stood and 
beheld, on the south, the wide sea with its 
rhythmic sighing against the rocks, the Fara- 
glioni, five hundred feet below; Monte Solaro 
rising on the west in the looming grandeur of 
its two thousand feet, overtowering the gray 
walls and turrets of dismantled Castiglione; 
above, on the east, Monte Semaphore; while 
the white, flat-roofed, balconied little city 
shone silent, ghostlike in the solemn night. 
The wandering moon, full, as befitted the 
occasion, rode in the resplendent blue of the 
mid-sky, radiant, in her own lustre, as a god- 
dess coming down out of the heavens. Thus 
standing, entranced by the witchery of the 
scene, with arms upraised in rapture to the 
Queen of Night, he cried: " George! I'm 
coming out here the first thing to-morrow 
morning to paint her!" 

Upon the highest point of the ruins of 
Villa Jovis, overlooking the Bocca, stands, 
shining golden far out to sea, a statue of Ste. 
Maria, recently erected by the brother of the 
ex-King of Naples. Near it is a small chapel, 
built in the sixteenth century by the devotion 
of the Capri people, and there, as custodian, 
has lived for nearly half a century a gentle 
i5 




hermit, who now is aged more than four- 
score years. He seems a remaining soul, the 
last survivor of the Lares of the Villa Jovis. 
The "Lead, Kindly Light," of his shining 
brown eyes, the meditative brow, the respon- 
sive smile for the visitor in quick recognition 
of friendly appeal, the unconscious grace of 
movement, might well be taken for the sum 
of the qualities of the gentle Capri folk. He 
sits many hours in the sun in front of the west- 
facing chapel door, the broad expanse of the 
sea on his left, the smiling island of greenery 
before him, the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius 
and its mushroom clouds of steam and smoke 
on his right. I present myself, and his tall 
form rises to greet me in welcome as I ascend 
the steps to his door — the singing organist! 

Shall I repeat to him your question: 
"Please explain yourself?" He could ex- 
plain many things, with that high, broad fore- 
head, and in the benignity of his gaze find 
excuse for more. Don't you think, if you 
were here, you would not think Capri "so 
far away" ? If you could associate me with 
this ancient presiding genius of Monte Tibe- 
rio, would you yet think me "an enigma"? 

I had almost forgotten your request that I 
16 



should acquaint you with "anything occult" 
I might find in my travels which would give 
zest to your contemplated paper for the 
Woman's Club until I had several interviews 
with the hermit — I was so occupied with 
settling those " questionings !" Selfish in me ? 
It is only a good constitutional climb of an 
hour from the town to the cozy chair by the 
chapel door; and there, with the Madonna to 
watch over us, my Ancient and I make close 
friends with the breeze and the birds, and call 
up the ghosts from the temples of the twelve 
gods — who have gone "so far away." 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, November 30, 190-. 



My dear , 

Yes, as you hoped, I did enjoy a "Thanks- 
giving Day " with (would you believe it ?) 
a real turkey -and -cranberry dinner. But 
the glad thanksgiving was for your letter 
received that day. 

Your club paper seems to trouble you, al- 
though the programme sets it for some time 
17 



to come. "Courage, Christian Soldier!'' I 
have been sitting at the feet of my Gamaliel! 
But no apostolic succession can halo me as an 
apostle to any one. By the way, in the midst 
of your absorbing duties as a teacher, why not 
recreate yourself by a ramble through St. 
Paul's letters ? — just for the sake of the 
novelty of it! It will be as if you opened a new 
book for the denouement; for you must turn 
back to the beginning for local color, times, 
character, and motive — to Matthew et seq. 
You might get a religion! St. Paul was 
illumined by a supernal search-light to de- 
clare the mysteries of the life of the Spirit. 
How he makes plain the perfect way! "Be- 
hold I show you a mystery: We shall not all 
sleep, but we shall all be changed; for this cor- 
ruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
mortal must put on immortality." There is 
some occult for your paper! I await your 
club paper! 

Of the thirty thousand strangers who tour 
to Capri yearly my Ancient has been visited 
daily during the long years past by men of 
many minds, and appears to have garnered 
the intellectual experiences and speculations 
of the times, and these have simmered down 
18 



in his lonely meditations into a residual com- 
pound which, as he administers to me 
allopathically, I shall endeavor to give you in 
homoeopathic doses; for I have nothing else 
to do, and must "be doing something in the 
world," even at the risk of your thinking it 
better undone. 

I am sorry I cannot give you word for 
word the language of my old friend, and I 
fear the transmitting medium of his mono- 
logues will only enable you to see as through 
a glass darkly. I speak of his monologues 
because, when I have led him to talk on the 
supernatural, the occult, and the spiritual, I 
have touched him where he lives! You 
should behold him sometimes when im- 
passioned in his discourse. I have stayed 
late, and as in the starlight he has passed to 
and fro before me, "as a tree walking," 
gesticulating, his gown flowing with his 
movement, his head in the clouds of speech, 
his long beard punctuating his sentences on 
the sky, he was the traditional picture of a 
prophet of Israel. It is said that we should 
translate the record "Elijah was fed by the 
ravens " that he was fed by the tramps — 
the passers-by. I am not wise as to that, but 
l 9 



my dear old hermit has had food where of 
and who of I know not. One evening I led 
up to your subject. 

In substance, he holds that there is and 
should be an Occult Science, a secret treas- 
ure of knowledge. That it is pursued by 
the elect is the mere condition of qualifica- 
tion, as is that of the priest, the physician, 
the lawyer, the artist, the artificer. That 
it is understood depends upon the same 
condition — that ability to comprehend. To 
His disciples Christ said: "To you it is given 
to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, but to them it is not given." The 
elect are simply those who are in condition to 
receive. "He that hath ears to hear let him 
hear" is the foreordination of all knowledge. 
To the Occult has been referred the studies, 
experiments, and exhibitions of astrologers, 
necromancers, and magicians, the seekers 
after the philosopher's stone, the elixir of 
life, and the universal solvent. They have 
been said to have had their "familiars" — 
spirits, devils — and from them bought or 
wrested the secrets forbidden of Nature. 
There was a woman at Endor that had a 
familiar spirit. It is curious how the devil 

20 



has been thought to reign exclusively over 
the unknown, the hidden powers of Nature. 
He is that vermiform appendix surviving 
from the primeval heat which both science 
and religion are submitting to surgery. He 
is the Hero of Ignorance. What Occult 
Science teaches cannot be known generally. 
The writings which teach of it are obscure 
except to the enlightened : they are in allegory, 
or they deal in symbols of which the initiated 
only have the key to the cryptogram. St. 
John's Revelation needs a revealer, and 
Genesis requires an esoteric teacher. There 
is no systematic grammar or Baedeker by 
which any one may certainly learn or practise 
occult science or know what it is. The 
student, the neophyte, the chela, must put 
himself in condition, mentally and physically, 
to know and pursue the science, or in fact to 
know that there is such a science. Reading 
Bulwer's Zanoni, one perceives how difficult 
it was for the young man to give himself to 
the pursuit. And the man, who had kept all 
the commandments, inquired of the Teacher 
what he should do to inherit eternal life, 
when required to go and sell all that he had 
and give to the poor, that he might have 
21 



treasures in heaven, and to come, follow Him, 
"went away sorrowful, for he was one that 
had great possessions." The Occultist must 
give his whole heart to his purpose; every 
light of intelligence must be shining, every 
force of will must be in hand, or the awful 
foot of the brute will break the charmed circle 
of his endeavor. As he seeks to wring her 
secret from Nature, he must achieve a mastery 
over her by enveloping himself in a spiritual 
mantle with which to ungirdle this fierce 
Brunhild in her bridal bed. 

Elisha, the prophet, knew what was whis- 
pered in the bedchamber of the hostile King 
of Syria. He healed Naaman, the leper, and 
caused the leprosy to cleave to the boodling 
Gehazi. An army sent to arrest him was 
stricken with blindness. At his behest thirsty 
land became refreshed with water. To re- 
lieve distress, upon his supplication, oil and 
bread increased many fold. He restored 
to life the son of the Shunamite woman. 
He magnetized a twig so that it drew up 
from the bottom of Jordan the borrowed axe 
of the bereft workman. He foretold birth 
and death, the victory and defeat of kings; 
he anointed men to be kings. The fact 
22 



that his so-called "miracles" are narrated in 
the Bible does not argue that Elisha did not 
know what he was about; nor does it preclude 
inquiry as to how he wrought them. He 
was the pupil of Elijah, and was himself the 
teacher and manager of a School of the 
Prophets. There must have been resident 
in him a quality of life, a potential force, a 
lodestone of vitality, by means of which he 
could magnetize the dull iron of common life. 
He had a sixth sense pervasive of space. His 
soul was an inhabitant of the fourth dimen- 
sion. He was clairvoyant to see the powers 
and principalities of the air encamped about 
him, with power to open the eyes of his ser- 
vant likewise to view them. He was clair- 
audient of the secrets of kings. He knew 
and foretold — maybe, caused — the flight of 
the besieging Syrian army because of fear 
at the "noise of chariots and a noise of 
horses, even the noise of a great host." He 
was a man of physical superiority, and by 
his mode of life peculiar. He attained an 
incorporeal development unique even among 
that spiritual race, the Hebrews; so that, in 
after times, when Jesus appeared working 
wonders "some said it was Elias." The 
23 



pupil of Elijah far exceeded his occult teacher 
in power and prescience, and covered the stern 
qualities of his preceptor with a mantle of 
Kindliness. 

The fakirs of India, so far and beyond 
that they are mere prestidigitateurs, by 
heredity and long-continued exercise of will, 
have a faculty of animal magnetism, or 
hypnotism, by which they delude the imag- 
ination of the onlooker, so that he appre- 
hends any object at their suggestion; or it 
may be, in instances, they do project appear- 
ances of particular objects, shapes, dummies, 
to which the spectator attributes life and 
characteristics, as must have been the case 
in the contest between Moses and the magi- 
cians before Pharaoh. Moses was "learned 
in all the wisdom of Egypt"; was a neophyte 
at Hieropolis, the priestly college, was educat- 
ed in the priesthood as became the adopted 
son of Egypt's King, who was both King and 
the High Priest of the Great God Ra, and so 
was possessed of "that divinity which doth 
hedge about a King." 

So, in exemplification of your subject, you 
might induce your club to buy a Bible for 

24 



its library. But while it is engaged in so 
depleting its treasury, let me add some fur- 
ther reflections — you may call them hy- 
potheses — with which my instructor has 
favored me. 

He says that the evolution of the Human 
Soul is one thing, the birth or devolution of the 
Spirit, or Spiritual Soul, quite another. The 
trinity of man is body, soul, and spirit. The 
body and human soul are matters of evolution, 
but the spiritual soul is not a matter of 
evolution — the survival of the fittest — for it 
is an emanation from the Infinite One. The 
Spirit is that image of Him — the "likeness" 
into which man became — for "God is a 
Spirit." It is this spirit which is the wonder- 
worker. Man's wilful denial of that spirit is 
a refusal of life everlasting. To be conscious 
of its indwelling is to "inherit eternal life." 
As man can recognize what is without him- 
self only from that which he has within, it is 
essential to his perception of things spiritual 
that he himself be spiritually minded. "The 
natural man," says St. Paul, "receiveth not 
the things of the Spirit, neither can he know 
them, for they are spiritually discerned." 
The quest for the Holy Grail is to him who 
3 25 



has already drunk of the wine of the spirit. 
As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "How- 
beit we speak wisdom among the perfect: 
yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the 
rulers of this world, which are coming to 
nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a 
mystery, even the wisdom that hath been 
hidden, which God foreordained before the 
worlds unto our glory: which none of the 
rulers of this world knoweth: for had they 
known it, they would not have crucified the 
Lord of glory; but as it is written: 

"'Things which eye saw not, and ear heard 
not, and which entered not into the heart 
of man, whatsoever things God prepared for 
them that love Him. 

'"But unto us God revealed them through 
the Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, 
yea, the deep things of God.'" 

Now if there should be any heartburnings 
about the diversion of the club's funds for 
The Book, you have only to refer it to the 
above so apt quotation coming from my 
Aged One to prove the existence of the occult, 
"the wisdom that hath been hidden," and to 
identify the persons to whom and through 
26 



what interposition it is revealed. But hear 
my friend explain: 

"The human soul is merely illustrated by 
the personality. The animal soul is of the 
animal. As man is an animal he has an 
animal soul; and, as he is a man, he has 
evolved or is capable of evolving a human 
soul which, despite immense longevity of ages 
upon ages, may finally lose its personality, 
disintegrate, and dissolve into other forms of 
semi-material life which is 'the second death/ 
or, by attainment of the Spiritual quality, 
achieve the condition of living everlastingly. 
It is the inexorable law of cause and effect 
— which is justice — in things moral that man's 
nature and condition in the future life de- 
pend, and they are the effects of tendencies 
voluntarily encouraged by him in the past 
and present. This necessitates future lives 
on earth, as man in this life is the product, the 
effect, of past lives. Nature loses nothing. 
'Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for 
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap. For he that soweth unto the Spirit 
shall of the Spirit reap eternal life.' The 
occultist deals with the causes of things. 
In this age of investigation experiments in 
27 



all matters which may be demonstrated to 
any of the five senses have ceased to be 
deemed occult, and the domain of the so- 
called supernatural has been reduced and 
almost limited to the consideration of the 
so-called immaterial qualities of the body 
and spirit; that is, to the psychical feature 
of occult science. The medium is one whose 
vital force, by reason of bodily imperfection, 
escapes as water oozes through a sun-dried 
barrel, or is one who has a superabundance 
of that fluidic force which more than fills the 
body and trickles over the brim. It is in 
this substance of vitality oozing or over- 
flowing out of the living body that the 
1 spirit' bodies of the departed in Hades, and 
other intelligences as well, live again, and for 
the time of immersion are filled with ap- 
preciable life. This fluid, 'biogen, od/ is 
substantial. It is not only such stuff as 
dreams are made on, but is the dream-stufF 
itself. It is the magic carpet. It is that to 
which the hypnotist appeals, and which 
materializes in the imagination of the sub- 
ject all that is suggested to him. It is 
simply the vehicle of the life principle; so 
intimate the connection with the body that 
28 



while it remains unexhaled Lazarus may be 
bidden to 'come forth!' It is this substance 
which flees when one is frightened to death. 
It is the 'hoorla,' the mirror, which receives 
and retains impressions of things, of thoughts 
and images in the minds of others as well. 
Its supra-normal development gives us the 
medium, the clairvoyant and clairaudient, 
the gift of second-sight, the seer. This de- 
velopment is a matter of proper (or, as the 
ignorant consider, improper) exercise. The 
clairvoyant is a person who discovers ob- 
jects concealed from sight by distance or 
intervening obstacles; who sees into things 
without opening them, or has second sight. 
It is the positive and voluntary, instead of 
the passive and involuntary, use made of this 
fluid or ghost-stuff of the medium, which 
the clairvoyant and clairaudient person uses 
to sense things. We are creatures of five 
senses in search of that sixth, whose faculty 
of expression may be Swedenborg's * com- 
munication by correspondence,' but whose 
self may be the expression of that real Soul — 
that Spiritual Soul in whose potency lies the 
force to set in motion and to dominate all the 
bodily and psychic capabilities of man. If 
29 



such potency can be evoked the laying on of 
hands means something, and the healing 
of paralytics and the ills arising from ob- 
structions of the blood becomes a possibility: 
but this ' cometh only through fasting and 
prayer.' 

"The practices of asceticism are sup- 
posed to require mortification of the body, 
but uncleanliness or disregard of the body 
is as repugnant to the highest devotion to 
occult science as idle or lustful thoughts are 
to purity of heart. These practices may be 
followed by those who cannot otherwise 
disregard fleshly indulgence and concentrate 
their thoughts. The prescriptions to * sub- 
ject the body' and to * bring the body 
under' are only applicable to a weak or 
diseased mind. 'One man hath faith to 
eat all things; but he that is weak eateth 
herbs.' It is only in the perfect body of 
'one among ten thousand and altogether 
lovely' who is capable of the sustained la- 
bors, the self-denials, the courage of will 
to become a hierophant so as to control 
the forces of nature as well outside as with- 
in himself. No doubt the schools of the 
Prophets have been maintained to this day. 
30 



It could hardly be that a man having at- 
tained to the 'gift of the spirit' would will- 
ingly break the ladder of his success, but 
the rather, as he ascended, would drop his 
mantle upon some Elisha of his hope. One 
hardly could be expected to leave no heir of 
him succeeding who had heard from afar the 
whispered consultation in the King's bed- 
chamber; or who had suffered unharmed the 
bite of poisonous vipers and fought uncon- 
quered with lions at Ephesus; or who, 
'whether in the body or out of the body,' had 
seen the mysterious progress of the soul in 
the nether world, and heard voices whose 
speech it was 'not lawful for man to utter.' 
The authority which Jesus gave to His 
disciples, whom He sent forth to heal all 
manner of diseases, must have been accom- 
panied with instructions how to exercise as 
well as to avail themselves of the power given 
them by Him when He retired with them into 
'a mountain apart.' Is there any miracle to 
him who performs it ? He may not be able 
to define or analyze, or to explain the origin 
or action of the force he is conscious of having 
employed. He knows, however, 'that virtue 
has gone out of him.' There is nothing 
3 1 



supernatural. The will of God in nature 
cannot be supernatural. God works no 
miracles which are so to Him. His works 
are past rinding out, that is all. Man is now 
engaged in the development of his human 
soul: some men have attained to the posses- 
sion of a spiritual soul, and are accounted 
as of the Divine. We may become con- 
scious of the existence of it as a flashing spark 
in the recesses of a vast cavern, and lift our 
hands in the hope of realizing its flame in 
the ages upon ages. To realize it in full 
consciousness is to have 'our face to shine' 
and our ( raiment to become shining, exceed- 
ing white as snow, as no fuller on earth can 
whiten them.' The attainment of this su- 
preme consciousness is the destiny of man in 
his procession in the ages on ages through 
the world; how to obtain it belongs to the 
study of the psychology of occult science — 
a religion. The Gospel of Christ teaches for 
mankind the possibility of possessing this 
Christ within us — the 'hope of glory, the 
hope of everlasting life.' The transfigura- 
tion was a physical manifestation of its 
presence, the resurrection a proof of its po- 
tential quality, and the ascension of its be- 
32 



ing in the image of God. The Centurion at 
the crucifixion recognized its presence when 
he exclaimed: 'Truly this man was the Son 
of God !' The Spirit only can be said to be 
the Son of God — the Only Begotten; gross 
matter is the work of His hands. The high- 
est climax of the drama of Job is the ecstatic 
outburst of hope realized: 'I know that my 
Redeemer liveth, and at last He will stand 
up upon the earth: and after my skin, even 
this body, is destroyed, then without my 
flesh shall I see God.' How grand are the 
possibilities of Man! Need he longer say, 
as Manoah to his wife, 'We shall surely die, 
for we have seen God ' ? The occultist en- 
deavors to answer the question: 'All things in 
heaven and in earth are of God, both the 
visible and the invisible. Such as is the in- 
visible is the visible also; for there is no im- 
passable bound between spirit and matter. 
Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognizable 
by the force of the Divine Word. When 
God shall resume all things by love — the 
divine attraction — the material shall be re- 
solved into the spiritual and there shall be a 
new heaven and a new earth." 

When my Ancient had so ended the 
33 






Occultist's rhapsody he was so exultant of the 
vision of the coming spiritual new heaven 
and new earth that I felt he would be more 
lonely with than without my company. In 
his pale, upturned face I saw the glorified 
calm of the Great Peace, and, without a 
word, I left him and went quietly down the 
star-lit way. Stumbling along, I wondered 
if that Supervisor of Tiberian roads had 
not come back and was in office again. The 
marble palaces which once adorned the 
Roman highway were not; the rumbling 
chariots and ramping horses, the processions 
of priests of Isis, of Mithra, and of the twelve 
gods of Rome with their flaming torches, 
blaring trumpets, dancing youths, and the 
thousand slaves of burden, had gone; and 
there was only a lonely rock -paved and 
stone-walled path with the one solitary foot- 
man pondering the words he had just heard, 
and wondering if in any former life he 
had ever been, or in the Great Hereafter he 

would be, companion, friend (or ?) 

of you! 

I do not suppose the Hermit would object 
to your availing yourself of anything he has 
said; he has no use for speech, or anything 
34 



else, except to give it away. As for myself, 
I am still sitting at his feet — at the foot of 
the class — and remaining 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, December 24, IQO- 

My dear : 

I posted my last letter hurriedly to catch 
the home-bound steamer, and to give you 
my Aged's ideas on occultism for use in your 
paper; and I am glad it arrived in the nick 
o' time for the purpose, but I was not pre- 
pared for the result you have been so speedy 
to relate in your letter gladly received the day 
before yesterday, part of which I could not 
resist the temptation to read to the Aged 
Author on the evening of that day. It is the 
part in which you say that, with many quota- 
tion marks, and "It is saids," and "It is 
helds," you interweaved your paper with 
extracts from the Hermit's outgivings; but 
had not given any consideration to the few 
lines about reincarnation, a subject in which 
35 






from the gardens of God and then come back 
here for a span of threescore and ten years 
out of, say, every two thousand ? If we 
could only realize that the true life is that 
of the conscious spirit, we would consider 
our immersion into this world but a baptism 
to a new birth in "heaven." I am reminded 
of a question you ask: "What do we do be- 
tween births?" "Sleep, perhaps to dream," 
says Hamlet. But what do you do now ? 
You think. The outer world with which, 
during this life, you come into contact 
through your senses, merely furnishes you 
food for thought; then you go away until you 
have exhausted the subject and are hungry 
again. You wrestle with ignorance, the lack 
of divine perfection (some call that lack, 
Evil); you touch the earth and gather strength 
of experience, labor, suffering, love, and 
finally, when in exhaustive possession of all, 
conquer. You learn and sing the score of 
all the music of this world, and, when 
proficient, join the "Choir Invisible." In 
heaven there are many mansions, and you 
must furnish and inhabit them all. The 
fact of His going prepared them for your 
faith. 

38 



I do not think that you need be afraid of 
the "gods many" of St. Paul, or of the 
Pantheon of the pagan. 

If there be any differences in the degrees of 
advancement of humanity in the spiritual 
world when released from the wheel of in- 
carnation, they will not be greater than those 
on the earth now. There will be work and 
joy enough — as there is here and now. 
As Admiral Schley said, after the victory off 
Santiago: "There's glory enough for all." 

I know there are many questions as to how, 
when, and where you lived during past lives 
on earth. When you think of it, the same 
questions arise as to you — you, the Thinker; 
you, the Dreamer, the Word-Builder, during 
this present life — who have in haunt "many 
a quaint and curious volume of forgotten 
lore." 

If the essential you is a veritable thing, a 
substance however ethereal, however subtile 
— as magnetic force, electricity, or the ether 
itself, is a thing — then you have existed before 
you became manifested in that beautiful body 
of yours; and I may loyally add, so lived that 
you deserved your present habitation. Grant- 
ed that you lived on this planet, you were 
39 



X 



with your kindred-soul relations, of all sorts, 
and you gravitated to this life Kinward. Even 
obedience to the law of motion by way of 
least resistance would bring this accord. 
As "Love is stronger than death, many 
waters cannot drown it," the soul seeks 
its companion-soul when reincarnated. Then 
don't you think loving should find its object 
without striving, without impatience, with- 
out jealousy ? It should come from above, 
as the dew from the sky of former lives. 
True love is not made, it is born; it is the 
child of the past and of interbirth dreams; 
it is the honey stored from all the flowers 
of the life-fields. The object loved is the 
ideal pictured by all our past lives — for 
they are the painters. Such love is worth 
waiting for as we wait for the rose to bloom 
from seed planted long ago. If we do not, 
in this one life, meet our ideal, this true love, 
then single blessedness is no failure. 

You say : " It is not very amusing to have to 
be born again and to work out my salvation. 
Once is enough for me. So far, life is hardly 
worth living again." But, my dear, you will 
not live the same life again; you will know 
better how to live. Last evening I was at the 
40 



chapel door again and told my Ancient what 
you had further written: that you wished 
•you could live your present life over again 
if you could only be born with the knowledge 
you now have, for you could then avoid 
making many grievous mistakes and order 
your life on different and greatly higher 
levels. 

"Yes, yes," he began, "that is the wish of 
unreflection; but it shows a noble discontent 
which is the seed of progress. Your friend 
may have cause for her dissatisfaction. She 
may have lost some opportunity, failed to 
realize some ideal — as we all have. Ah me! 
Yet the fact that she perceives and acknowl- 
edges such loss and failure is evidence of her 
high intent. She can begin a new life, be 
born again, now! Let her re-form her 
broken ideals, and, having unmasked her 
enemies — her weaknesses and faults — begin 
the battle anew. However, she may console 
herself, in part; she has already fought a good 
fight — for what was she when she last lived 
on earth ? Her discontent is of ancient 
seeding, and is now fruiting in grander as- 
pirations. All that she is now is plus what 
she has been in the past. Let her consider 
4i 



the pit from which she has been digged, and 
take courage. I am glad, young man, that 
you have such a friend." 

As he concluded we sat in silence for 
some time, watching the full moon sinking 
over Monte Solaro into your west, and I, 
following it over sea and land, came to the 
gate of our parting; then, rather thinking 
aloud as in a dream than responding to him, 
I said: "So am I." I felt him detect and 
follow my gaze, and then: 

"Indeed!" was all my Wise One said. 

Once I heard, "as the voice of one crying 
in the wilderness," one who had lost the 
way, was bewildered, despairing, for the paths 
were tangled, crooked; before and behind 
was the gloom of impending forest: "I wish 
I had never been born, but / cannot get 
back!" The mistakes of the years past were 
a maze, the future was a continuing labyrinth. 
It was dreadful, that "I cannot get back!" 
To such a caged starling, is there not some 
solace in the fact that although it cannot get 
back it can go forward — can rest, review, and 
repent its errors, and come again into the 
wilderness and make straight its paths ? 
Withal, there is one reflection which gives 
42 



us pause. There is no escape of the soul 
from reincarnation by shuffling off this mortal 
coil; death does not give absolution; if one 
life is not worth living, we must live until it 
is made worth while; the coward suicide but 
prolongs his task of Sisyphus. 

That we are to be born again into this 
earth-life is what makes this life worth living, 
my old friend says. That we shall try again 
gives a zest to the present; for the manner 
in which we enjoy or suffer now we will en- 
rich or impoverish the hereafter life, with 
the added enrichment of the intermediate 
rest, the dream-life. The motives, the 
thoughts (for "thoughts are things") will 
give suggestion to the hereafter even as "the 
child is father of the man." The lives past 
are an anagoge to the present one. If it is 
not " amusing" it is verily interesting. When 
we go hence, don't you think we shall ponder 
of things left undone, of mistakes to be 
corrected, kindnesses foreborne; the failure 
of one may become the triumph of the next 
life; the unsatisfied longings of the one be 
adjusted in the next by wisdom gained from 
reflection in our intermediary life — " heaven." 
And so we will go on through the ages until 
43 



in the divine progress (for it is a progress) of 
all things we become "sons of God." Oh! 
life is worth living, worth loving, because we 
may, some day, attain to the love which 
God has for all things. 

In your past life you may have been a pupil 
of some master of the ferule and rod, and 
often craved to show him what a teacher 
should be. I hope, now, if he is learning his 
lessons of you, his head is hot under the coals 
of fire you heap upon it. 

It is this past — the causes set in motion 
from life to life — that is the suggestion which 
projects the lesson of one life into another, 
and is really that which Charles Grant, in 
his "Poem of Life," personifies: 

"Ere a babe is born to its bliss or harm, 
God takes the naked soul on His arm, 
And whispers a great word in his ear, 
So that it cannot choose but hear. 
On whatever land that babe shall grow, 
Whether the world shall hear or know, 
If he be strong, or if he be weak, 
No other word his soul shall speak." x 

Blessed is she who hath ears to hear that 
word! You have heard the story of the 
44 



"Lost Name"? The true name of the 
Supreme, the Only One, was given by Him 
to a wise man, who was to impart it only 
with his dying breath to one other. It was 
passed thus from one to another until a Wise 
One, dying, sought to transmit it to a youth 
as his successor, but, as with expiring breath 
he was uttering it, the youth turned to listen 
to the song of a girl beneath the window, and 
— alas! the name, the holy word, unheard, 
was lost! So, now, we have only man-made 
symbols to signify the unutterable mystery. 

Oh no, I am not "studying for the minis- 
try"; I am simply hermiting. 

You further add that you avoided mention 
in your club paper of the Hermit's occult 
explanation of the faculties of Spirit-mediums, 
because, as their performances are mostly in 
the dark, you "did not deem it best to in- 
troduce the shady subject." Let me suggest 
what I infer from the Ancient's theory (?) of 
vibrations. The light from the sun is hurled 
to the earth at the rate of about ninety-five 
million miles in eight minutes; in vibrations 
it beats upon and penetrates the atmosphere 
of the earth, which is about forty miles thick 
and has a weight of fifteen pounds to the 
45 



square inch on the earth's surface. It strikes 
the earth with a direct force equal to nearly a 
hundred thousand tons weight. Now, don't 
you think that force must be accounted when 
dealing with that subtile fluid (if it may be 
so called) of vital or magnetic energy oozing 
out of or overflowing from the Medium ? 
It would seem that the direct rays of the sun 
driven, palpitating with throbbing percussion 
upon the earth would break in storm upon 
the fragile, tenuous waves of ooze or over- 
flow of mediumistic magnetism, and drown 
any spook who adventured his frail bark 
across the Styx. The surging push of the 
sun's rays of light is a force which con- 
tinually aids the centrifugal flight of the 
planets, in a degree counteracting the power 
of gravity of the sun's immensity. 

Those who deny the longing and the pitiful 
attempts of the disembodied to communicate 
with their kindred on earth usually disclose 
a preference to cut out the hereafter alto- 
gether — probably for reasons of their own. 
I broached inquiringly this subject of medium- 
ship to the Hermit, but all the information ( ?) 
he vouchsafed was, "Alas, poor Medium!" 

Yet there must be some fluid to bear the 
46 






wireless telegrams of disunited souls, which 
the patience of the open-minded Scientist 
and the hope of the Christian shall yet 
probatively rediscover. 

Who shall say that, in the complementary 
and now invisible (as the infra-red and the 
ultra-violet) rays of light, the ghostly fingers 
that rap and write may not become sensible 
to mortal eyes ? 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, December 27, 190- 

My dear : 

For fear of being tiresome to you, I did not 
attempt to answer all the inquiries in your 
last (club!) letter. Besides, I have had an- 
other sitting with my Gamaliel. 

I am pleased to find you interested in this 
little island, but hardly flattered by your 
saying this "dot on the earth must derive its 
color from the eyes which seem to be in love 
with it"; and you intimate that Capri 
Rosso has also lent its rubiness to beautify 
47 



it. But I can say, as Daniel Webster said of 
Massachusetts: "There she is. Behold her, 
and judge for yourselves!" It is not her 
blue, white, red, and green grottos, her 
caves, her crumbled altars of Mithra and 
the gods; the Saracen watch-towers embrasur- 
ing its west coast; the grim, tattered castle of 
Barbarossa on steepled Monte Solaro, or 
even the good people who cheerily build and 
plant, worship and make merry; but it is 
the altogether, the atmosphere of the whole 
island, which makes one feel not only alive 
but living. 

You say you are "glad to learn about the 
occult matters the Hermit talked of," and 
ask me, "as his pupil, to be prepared for 
'exams." My Seer is sufficient unto him- 
self — an oracle on his own account, without 
any "assumacy." He believes in the man- 
datory permission given originally when 
Adam was installed in the command of the 
earth, his commissary limited by: "Of every 
grain that beareth seed thou shalt eat"; and, 
through obedience, the days of his years are 
threescore years and ten; and by reason of 
strength they are fourscore, yet is their 
strength rest and gladness! 

4 8 



The trouble with some of your club mem- 
bers is that they enjoy the bliss of ignorance; 
particularly that one who came out of ambush 
with her 22-calibre black eyes levelled at you 
and demanded that you stand and deliver 
with: "Oh! what you say about Elisha — 
why, that's in the Bible! Give us something 
fresh!" You might refer such a one to 
the evidences gathered in late years, since 
scientific methods in collecting facts have 
been instituted, and to the deductions there- 
from which at least tend to prove that the 
individual soul (Spirit, Thinker) does exist 
after death, and that it is possible for it to 
communicate with the living (but, ah! why 
awaken the smiling dreamer?); that it, in a 
bodily shape, while of the body as well as 
when recently not, can, possibly, visit and 
be seen by the living. People in general 
are heedless of the great work done in these 
days to blow into flame the embers of smoul- 
dering faith in the resurrection of the Christ — 
the Spiritual Soul in the Spiritual Body. 

Indeed, if your club guerilla wishes some 
really recent refreshment, you might refer her 
to The Life of Father Ignatius, the Monk of 
Llanthony. 

49 



The Via Tiberio, wall-lined, between villas 
and vineyards, leads up by the "Caffe Mar- 
gherita and Carolina," where the Siren, 
Carolina, " always gay," greets this traveller, 
"who passeth by this road so late" (or 
early), with a tarantella carol from her 
overlooking balcony; while the gentle Evan- 
geline-faced Margherita offers a bouquet of 
the fragrant narcissus as he reaches her 
door; thence up by the lighthouse — once 
"wont to shed its rays sweet to anxious 
ships" — and over ruined Tiberian galleries, 
halls, amphitheatres, armories, and cisterns, 
until he again finds the gentle hermit, who, 
having seen him a long way off, awaits his 
prodigal. Neither falls on the other's neck 
nor kisses — although falling was an ancient 
practice up here, and kissing must not be 
surprised; alas, poor fisherman! Yet one 
might kiss the sweet-faced old man and be 
forgiven. I wonder if, half a century ago, 
some fair Margherita was not seen afar off 
and, prodigally, kissed and been forgiven! 
My daily, and often nightly, pilgrimages to 
my old friend, up there on the lonely moun- 
tain under the blue tent of God, have given 
me something to think of at least. 
5° 



I was going to tell you something which 
suggested my "wonder," and then I hesitated 
for the space of the last sentence, thinking I 
ought not to tell tales out of school; yet I can 
trust you with all my heart — and do — why 
not with something of that of another; 
though I know the sacredness with which you 
treasure (from me) the secret of your elect 
one! Besides, this is not a secret — simply 
something occult, to the ignorant — and may 
be a belated chapter in that " little story" I 
told you in my first letter. Last evening, as 
the sun tarried over Monte Solaro, and was 
paying his parting respects to the golden 
Madonna, to the ruins of Villa Jovis and the 
little chapel, before seeking a shrine beyond 
the sea, I came up for a night's occult revel 
with my Ancient, and with my kodak, that 
iconoclast of all the gods of modesty, sur- 
prised my dear old friend standing on the 
steps leading up to the chapel, and gazing 
mournfully and tenderly upon a tall, kerchief- 
ed figure in white below, whose face I could 
not see (as it was fixed on him), until, as I ad- 
vanced, she turned toward me. She was old, 
for her hair was streaked with gray; but 
young, for "the light that never was on sea or 
5i 



land," effulged her face, and the lines of 
patient years fled away and caused her to be 
transfigured. She was straight and strong, 
for she had borne the heat and burden of the 
day of a Capri workwoman; she was glorified, 
for she loved! For her was not written: 

"There's a love for a year, a love for a day, 
But alas for the love that lasts alway!" 

While she but glanced at my coming upon 
this innocent tryst, she was not ashamed or 
embarrassed, but, turning, walked away with 
the free step and joyance of bearing of one 
refreshed with the wine of the spirit which 
her threescore years and ten but enriched. 
And he, a hermit! The extreme gentleness 
of my Abelard, as he greeted me and led the 
way to our accustomed seat, was enhanced by 
a subdued joyousness. I was so perplexed 
by my self-reproaches for untimeliness in in- 
vading the sanctuary of the aged couple, 
that, to try to hide my confusion by the rule 
of opposites, I was led to ask the most irrel- 
evant and malapropos question: "What is 
the genealogy of hell ?" My dear old friend 
"never turned a hair," but with the serenity 
52 




AND HE, A HERMIT! 



of a babe answered: "Ah! hell is the fear of 
the future and is born of the past. Fear is 
the mother of care; and you know what killed 
the cat." 

"But what was it that feared ?" I asked. 

"Ah," said he, "that's another question. 
There was something that feared: the past 
cast its shadow, and out of it fear arose, its 
spectre. But what was it evoked the ghost? 
It was that something which does fear, does 
hope, grieve, rejoice, hate, love. It is the I, 
the ego, the soul — call it what you will — the 
subjective; the subliminal; the consciousness 
of consciousness, the residuum of thought ex- 
periences; the sublimate essence of all our 
emotions, desires, personalities; the individual 
entity — it is the substance of them all, the 
Self." 

" But what is the origin of the ' substance' ?" 

"My young friend," said the old man, "that 
origin is, as the Jewish scriptures have it, 
'in the beginning?' The spirit of life per- 
vades all material things (and I am not saying 
there is any other than the material — that is, 
substance) in the heavens above and the 
earth beneath, in one form or another. 
That spirit of Life was breathed out of the 
53 






Infinite, the God, the Beginner; and, formed 
and crystallized under His law, by process of 
that law, evolves ever higher and more com- 
plex forms of expression of that life, and 
finally is resolved back into Himself, com- 
pleting the circle of manifestation. Now 
man, combining in himself all the preceding 
forms, cannot, if he would, stop the spiral 
climb of evolution. He must, by the divine 
propulsion, ever seek that life more abun- 
dantly until he shall acquire what we may 
call a spiritual life — the life of the soul 
as self-existent. Can the evolution of the 
spirit of life, the life force, be complete ? Can 
the persistence of force, the conservation of 
energy, the law of continuing, be exhausted, 
come to a standstill, in the production of a 
mere man-animal ? 

"You may have a personal God, an an- 
thropomorphic God, if you will — if it helps 
you to comprehend, in any degree, by en- 
larging the proportions of the highest con- 
ceivable personality, until you may con- 
template Him in all man-like perfection — and 
yet you will have but a bare suggestion of 
what may be the All-wise, the Beneficent, 
the Almighty, the Only One. To this end, 
54 



as helps to the imagination, man has shrined 
his images; but the old command is upon the 
wise: 'Thou shalt make no graven images.' 
Yet, can you look up yonder at the myriad 
stars, at the Milky Way — that nebula of 
world -stuff — at the illimitable spaces no 
glass has yet pierced, and bridle your God 
to this less than an atom in His universe, 
and say that all this was made and per- 
petuated for a mere man-animal ?" 

The Aged One had risen, and, stretching 
his arms aloft and abroad, as if to call an 
expression of his idea down from the im- 
mensity, exclaimed: "Oh, that I might know 
Him!" 

After a contemplative pause, he turned to 
me with folded arms, as if in silent apology, 
and I asked: 

"Then you have heard of the Eastern 
doctrine of Nirvana ?" 

"Oh yes," he answered. "I have had 
several very learned visitors here who be- 
lieved in it. Why should a rain-drop refuse 
to flow down into the ocean ? We may be 
in accord, or at one, with God; but patience, 
my son, the Universe will be a graybeard 
before you or I shall be of God. When we 
55 






can think God's thoughts (and, remember, 
you are one of them), we won't object to 
become of Him; but, until then — Good- 
night!" 

The Hermit sought to tell me what hell is. 
Let me give you the geography of it — and 
then some! 

Seers, poets, and saints have localized hell 
and peopled an under-world with lost souls — 
mostly those of their enemies; but they, and 
even the Amiable Hermit, had not dreamed 
of a still farther but easily accessible place 
for the final abode of sinners. It remained 
for the Rev. Obedia Mashim, of the eight- 
gallon persuasion, 'way back in the "airly 
days," on his return to his congregation, after 
having driven his hogs to market at Cin- 
cinnati, and lingered there until Saturday 
night to sell them on a rising market, and 
having scruples against travelling on Sunday, 
was forced to remain in the city over the next 
day, to describe the wrecking of the Moselle 
(April 25, 1838), and proclaim to his flock 
upon his return home a new geography of 
souls. After making his excuses for absence 
on the preceding Sunday, he proceeded: 

" I was seekin' some place of worship, but, 

56 



like Noah's dove, I found no rest for my foot; 
but, meanderin' by the river-sides, there mine 
eyes beheld the new steamboat Mosellee 
reposin' upon the bosom of the beautiful 
Ohio, her steam blowin' off, her bells ringin', 
and on the wharf a vast crowd huzzahin', 
singin', and laughin' as the Mosellee started 
on her trial trip up the river. Then a band 
of music desecrated the Sabbath air with its 
audacious goin' on. Slowly she backed from 
the wharf, and then her great wheels churned 
the waters like the leveeathan in his fury, 
and she swum out into the stream, a magnif- 
icent structure and a credit to the city of 
her birth. Then, let mine ears be deaf and 
mine eyes blind, if I did not hear fiddlin' 
and see dancin' on her deck — aye, fiddlin' 
and dancin' and laughin' on the Lord's Day! 
Fiddlin' and dancin'! — the men with their 
arms around the women! I fain would have 
turned mine eyes away, so full was I of wrath. 
But there was the Mosellee, as she swep' up 
the river, the grand work of men's hands; 
and the sun in the blue heavens did not cd.se 
to shine on the abomination of wickedness 
of that Sodom and Gomorrah on her deck! 
Up the river she flew like a bird, and then 
57 






slewed about near the other side, when, all 
of a suddent, she explored her boilers — ah! 
She blew everything sky-high — ah! And all 
that fiddlin' and dancin' crew — ah! She blew 
some to heaven and some to hell and some 
clean away over into Kentucky — ah!" 

And thus it was that the bloody hunting- 
ground came to be a new locus umbra in the 
world of spirits. 

Of the three places you have choice. In 
heaven there is no marrying or giving in 
marriage; in hell it is too hot for domestic 
tranquillity; there remains Kentucky — with 
you I'll risk her. 

I fear your patience will not endure what 
to me has become so interesting — my con- 
versations with my friend. You have your 
daily work (I hope it is not labor), and I have 
my continuing leisure, coupled with an old 
habit of being busy — at something! You 
may think an "old man of the sea" is riding 
me, but, I assure you, it is I who am being 
carried away; I only wish it were to you. 
But this may not be, mea miserum! Suppose 
I join the Hermit, and "so let the wide world 
wag as it will, we'll be gay and happy 
still!" Then there would be no hermit, 
58 



only two jolly companions. I fear, however, 
that would violate the injunction: "Be not 
unequally yoked together." 
Let me say good-night! 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, January 30, 190-. 

My dear : 

Yours of the 15th inst. discloses you as a 
see-er, a star performer of a seance with 
yourself as audience, solus. You appear to 
have been a shadow-dancer — the shadow 
your own. 

You say you are glad I wrote you on the 
24th ult., as you had been much alarmed on 
the 22d by seeing my spook at your gate. 
You ran from the veranda, where you had 
tarried after bidding good-night to some 
very late departing guests, and were enjoying 
the clear, brilliant light of the moon in mid- 
sky, and, with the soft south wind presaging 
a green Christmas, were longing for a "cer- 
tain truant" to come home for a Christmas- 
59 



ing, when there, in full, palpable view, he 
stood! You say you "ran to meet him" 
and when you got to the gate he vanished 
away. 

"The Snark was a Boogum, you see." 
You hastened to the gate, looked up and 
down the street, but he was nowhere. It is 
generally believed that what you saw was 
"another of those things no fellow can find 
out" — out of certain mysterious cabinets, 
though 

"You may seek it with thimbles and seek it with 
care; 
You may hunt it with folks and hope; 
You may threaten its life with a railroad share; 
You may charm it with smiles and soap." 

And you did not faint! You simply leaned 
on the gate-post and said: "He is dead." 
You do not give me any of the post-mortem 
particulars — the garments of woe, heart- 
breakings, and so-forth; but it's gratifying 
to learn that my letter of the 24th ult. "was 
a glad relief." 

I knew a little girl who, when it fell to her 
lot to wash the dishes, always sang with the 
most dolorous psalmistry that blasphemous 
60 



hymn-line: " I'm glad that I was born to die." 
She is not dead yet; but she never saw a 
spook! If you really want an explanation of 
my manifestation, I can only suspect: / was 
there! Yet it was "All in your eye, Betty 
Martin. ,, Up there into the cortices of your 
gray matter "where is fancy bred," as I sat 
at the chapel door and saw the moon going 
down to you, my thought of you and myself 
at the gate of our parting projected itself, 
and (may I be pardoned for imagining) at 
the same time you had a vision of the same 
sadness: our thought of each other as we 
once stood there, united, and I was made 
exteriorly cognizable to you. You saw me 
present, as I was consciously thinking my- 
self to be. So, you see, "thoughts are things" 
a mode of motion, between us ? It was all 
on the wireless-telegraph system — finer and 
farther. It represents the idea of the near 
invention of the telephonic picture of the 
sender and receiver respectively appearing 
in response to the "Hi loo!" When our 
wills, consciously, are able to project our 
thoughts with our images to receptive wait- 
ing members of the New Telephone of Souls, 
call me up, please! 

61 



I told you of the Hermit and the lady at 
the chapel steps expecting sympathetic ap- 
preciation, but find you intimating a scandal. 
The whispered truth is scandalful. 

I would not have believed it, you inno- 
cent Little Teacher! Here I have you, in 
black and white, a traitor to your sex! Or is 
it an overweening vanity of that same sex 
with which you write: "I knew there was 'a 
woman in it'!" Hurrah for her, I say! I 
wonder if it was really your prescience of 
facts or a mere Eve-itical instinct which dis- 
closed to you that "there can be no hermit, 
pure and simple." Women have a sort of 
illusive intuition; for were not the Sibyls, 
the Delphines, the Vestals, all women ? So 
much so that Woman has assumed to be "the 
divinity that stirs within us" — all sorts of 
de-dev-devotion ! Instance: All our sym- 
bols — in fresco and statue, in park and palace, 
everywhere — of Industry, Art, Literature, 
Justice, Liberty, Peace, and — and War, are 
Women. 

There is a fable that when the gods were 
making woman and were throwing the in- 
gredients into the caldron, one inadvertently 
tossed in a soul — and thence came man's 
62 



toil and trouble. Blessings on the incon- 
sequent young chap for his carelessness! 
For he must have been a youthful sport, in- 
tent on fun. Or may it have been an old 'un 
on mischief bent — throwing the chestnuts 
into the fire that we men might monkey with 
the cat to get them out ? The widow of 
General Custer, in a lecture, said that during 
the Civil War she once was invited to the 
headquarters of the army to witness the dis- 
tribution of medals to twenty soldiers for 
distinguished service. When the men were 
lined up to receive their decorations they 
would have passed muster as so many pretty 
girls, they were so young and so blu shingly 
handsome; and, for acts, then and there nar- 
rated by the general commanding as each 
was given his insignia, of gay gallantry, reck- 
less and loyal devotion, patient suffering, and 
intrepid deviltry, they deserved to be ! 

I wonder if between fable and fact there is 
any relation of sequence; if so, it certainly was 
the young chap ! 

You say your work is often labor, for as a 
Teacher you are, in law, in place of the 
parents, a parent-in-law — you must com- 
bine in one the most heterogeneous elements. 

63 






The "old woman who lived in a shoe" had 
her blessed privileges. You think that as 
the remedy for divorces is proposed to be 
in sensible marriage laws requiring physical 
examinations for degenerates, additionally 
there should be required of the would-be- 
happy couple certificates of qualification as 
nurses and kindergarten teachers; thus they 
would be qualified to stand in loco parentis 
themselves. I agree with you. I think that 
a person who has taught school for, say, 
about ten years, would be entirely eligible! 
How would it do to establish reformatories 
for incorrigible parents ? Also, provide kin- 
dergartens for honeymooners and hospitals 
for divorcees ? 

I went to the Hermit with your difficulties 
in regard to rewards and punishments, which 
you seem to have difficulty in distributing in 
your school. You wish me to discover for 
you "the rod that chasteneth without chastis- 
ing," and to tell you "how spoiled the rod 
should be to spare the child." 

The Hermit never argues, never disputes. 

He listens and he talks; who am I to inter- 

locute ? I stated your case, and then tried 

to have ears to hear, but I doubt if I shall 

64 



be able to lend them to you. He talked as 
if alone: "As a fact, I do not think God ever 
punishes. Punishment for sin is a mis- 
nomer — the invention of man. We see a 
consequence of what we call wrong-doing, 
and we say it is a reward or a punishment. 
There is neither reward nor punishment in 
God's purpose. In it there is only cause and 
effect — justice — justice inexorable. There is 
no escape from it. There is no such thing as 
mercy either — mercy in the sense of relief 
from the effect of wrong-doing on the doer. 
I know this is shocking to one who has re- 
garded only man and his mode of govern- 
ment. Indeed, our legal punishments are 
not justice at all. You say: 'Let us temper 
justice with mercy.' Yes, let us. We are 
fallible: we do not know all. We administer 
justice like we do medicine — afflict the patient, 
hoping that Nature will hear the cry for help. 
Our penal statutes are hostile provisions for 
the safety of the social body, for the welfare 
of every other than the criminal. The so- 
called effect of sin against man's laws is arti- 
ficial; it is not caused by but merely follows 
disobedience. We put a man in prison, or 
take his property from him, or kill him; it is 

65 



not even an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
tooth. The punishment does not fit the 
crime, simply because we cannot create a 
natural effect from the artificial cause. 
Society, as such, is not responsible for the 
sins of men, save as the result of such sins 
hurts the whole or some member of the 
system. It is even deemed justifiable to in- 
flict the severest penalties upon a culprit as an 
example to deter others from committing 
crime. This is the old idea of the scapegoat 
bearing the sins of the people into the wilder- 
ness — without consulting the goat or the 
wilderness! It is in line with the counsel of 
Caiaphas, the high priest, that it was ' expedient 
that one man should die for the people'; in 
accordance with which the Holy Nazarene 
was murdered, obsequious to the expediency 
of the law. Christ dealt with the individual. 
'Love thy neighbor as thyself' is for the hap- 
piness of the loving, the effect on the neighbor 
is the incident. Until within a few years, 
before we had reformed the laws a little, if 
you saw a man judicially hanged by the 
neck, you could not say whether he had 
stolen, counterfeited the coin of the realm, 
smuggled a keg of brandy, rebelled against 
66 



the king, refused to attend church, or was a 
bigamist or a murderer. And now, if you 
visit a penitentiary, you cannot say of any 
convict there what offence he has committed. 
But, in nature, not a flower blooms or wind 
blows for which there is not a sure and 
adequate cause. It is easy, after the event, 
to say that Sodom and Gomorrah were 
punished by fire from heaven for Sin; but 
Christ said: ' Those eighteen upon whom the 
tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think 
ye that they were sinners above all that dwelt 
in Jerusalem ? I tell you, Nay.' It might as 
well be said of Pompeii and Herculaneum, 
that fires rained down from heaven and 
destroyed them as punishment for sin. We 
know they perished in an eruption of Mount 
Vesuvius, which had from time immemorial 
emitted flames and lava threatening them. 
They were pagan in all things of worship. 
They chose to live under a volcano and suf- 
fered the consequences. Let us not forget 
that there are ethical causes which may pro- 
duce physical effects. The low, voluptuous 
worship of the Pompeians was one of the 
first nature-religions of man. Physical lux- 
uriousness selected their place of abode, and 

67 



in sympathy with riotous nature they revelled 
in contiguity to the primeval, the passional 
heat of the fruitful slope of the burning moun- 
tain. Spiritual depravity and animal desire 
were associated with cosmic fertility and un- 
rest. The good often escape; they heed 
warnings. There may be angels — moral 
forces — to warn the good; for goodness in its 
receptivity, its obedience to spiritual sug- 
gestion, is in the line of Godward progress. 
But natural causes produce natural effects, 
and a good man may die of apoplexy in his 
tribune. If he had been wise in knowledge 
of his disease he might have lived longer, 
and, probably, he had lived long by reason 
of his obedience to suggestion. Mere good- 
ness does not change the laws of the universe, 
but by obeying them one has length of days. 
A man by taking thought may not add a 
cubit to his stature, but he may add an inch 
or two. While all I have heretofore said is 
true, you must know that there is a repentance 
and an obtaining mercy, in the sense that 
ceasing to do evil and learning to do good is 
obtaining mercy — is a coming into a non- 
sinning state. That man is able to repent, 
to turn from doing evil, is itself a mercy. 
68 



That one can turn Godward, can love his 
neighbor as himself, can love the Supreme, is 
a mercy. One may not escape the effect of 
past sinning by repentance, but that effect 
will be better borne; no more seed being sown, 
the harvest of evil will be cut short; and 
although tares may appear in the harvest, 
the wheat will be sufficient to rejoice in; be- 
sides, good is a more fertile seed than evil. 
It rains on the just and the unjust, but the 
just receive the gifts of God with fruit- 
bearing hands. 

"This rule of cause and effect — this equal 
working of the laws of nature, the com- 
pensatory adjustment of all forces — does not 
shut out the fact (the law) that the wise may 
cause Nature to work effects by the use of 
her laws, as the smith heats the iron and 
hammers it into such shape as he wills. So 
Christ healed the sick; so, by the power of 
the law of faith, He survived the crucifixion. 
Nothing happens. Ignorance, knowing no 
law of expectancy, says: 'It happens.' Nor 
does the rule deny that 'the prayer of the 
righteous availeth much,' for the faith- 
begetting prayer of the righteous is a force, 
a dynamic force in nature. It stirs the vital 






influences to healing. It is the telegraphic 
wire between the spirit of man and the forces 
in nature. Given the same faithful prayer 
by an equally righteous one, and the same 
result of healing will follow as an effect of 
the same cause. The mighty works of the 
prophets of old are not now seen simply be- 
cause the prophets are not — are not seen ? All 
this is but asserting the power of the spirit 
within man, the rule of the spiritual law over 
matter, to set in motion the forces of nature. 
What we now generally do is to drill the body 
and exercise the mind in order to feed and 
clothe the body. We invent wants, and spend 
our lives gratifying them. No wonder the 
prophets are not born of us. We breed cattle 
and kings, but not prophets or seers. We 
pray for riches and things of sense, which 
are to be worked for. The man who deter- 
mines to be rich can be rich; the law gives 
him the pound of flesh, but the life of the 
Spirit is not his. We can and do sow for 
riches and harvest them; they perish with 
the using, but there is a sowing of wise 
endeavor and joy which enricheth with the 
using." 

When my old friend had ceased, I asked 
70 






him: "What of one's past sins ? What is one 
to do with them ?" 

With a look of utter weariness, he answered : 
"Sins? There are sins and sins! Whatever 
they are, coddle them not, nor bedevil them. 
'Go and sin no more,' and, by all means, go! 
Bandage your bruised feet and — forget them! 
Displace the thou-shalt-nots of Moses with 
the affirmations of Christ! Don'ts are rocks 
of stumbling — they suggest offence, as 'the 
strength of sin is the law.' " 

Don't you think my Seer is correct in hold- 
ing that Society should exist only for the pro- 
tection of its members — for self-preservation, 
not for vengeance ? Percival Lowell has 
said that "politeness is the social art of living 
agreeably with one's fellows." The criminal 
must be taught politeness. If he cannot love 
his neighbor as himself, he, at least, must not 
be disagreeable; if he won't be polite, he must 
be restrained from evil until he learns to do 
good, although Society cannot compel him to 
be good : for, after all, he must punish himself. 
It is said: "The suicide is one who meets his 
executioner and slays him." Every man 
must meet his besetting sin and starve it to 
death. The preacher ends his sermon with 
7i 






an "application," the fabulist with a moral; 
one criminal I know of is a prisoner of Capri, 
trying to reform himself; but the more he 
tries, the more he is beset; the more he starves, 
the hungrier he is. Please pardon the per- 
sonal application and forego the moral, for 
I am afraid to meet my executioner — lest she 
slay me. I fear, however, that my sin has 
found me out (in the sense of discovery, not 
escape), when in your last note you say: 
"Men have said they loved me, and some I 
believed. " It is a satisfaction to know that 
you have not, with Job, said in your heart 
that "all men are liars." That "some" may 
cover a multitude of sinners, "of whom I am 
chief." I merely quote St. Paul and de- 
mand the proof, for I never have said it, yet — ? 
However, I was troubled when you added: 
" I have had a bitter disappointment." There 
you stop! Don't you think, this time, that 
it is you who should "explain yourself"? 
I have read that sentence over so often that, 
in my colloquies with my Hermit, when I 
tried to listen, so as to write you of what 
you style "his religions" (you seem to think 
he has several), I have become a disappoint- 
ment myself. I resent anything which is a 
72 



cause of pain to you. If any person has dis- 
appointed you, I shall certainly doubt if my 
Seer is correct in his views of punishment. 
My politeness, too, has its limit. Your trust 
is not sufficiently alive to impel you to confide 
your trouble to me, as of old. I have sinned 
and come short of the high calling of friend- 
ship, or something, which used to make a 
partnership of our hopes, fears, and trials. 
It cannot be that your Mr. Call is a disap- 
pointment — although the bitterness of him 
I have had reason to know. You cannot have 
failed as the Little Teacher — that is im- 
possible. I try to think you have exaggerated 
something trivial, which to your sensitive 
conscience is a mountain; but you are not 
given to misjudge. It is all a puzzle — a 
puzzle! I can only wait, and hope I also 
serve. Meanwhile, to cease from troubling, 
I shall earnestly devote myself to learn all 
I can from the lips of my philosopher and 
friend ; although your " bitter disappointment " 
has caused me to feel that Tom Moore's lines, 

"Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your 
anguish, 
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal," 

6 73 



desires, passions, which cry out to be satis- 
fied. We are prone to sacrifice; proud to 
vanity to be able to give, since giving implies 
in us a surplus of riches. We "want to be 
doing something in the world " in the order 
of inherited nature — to obey the sentence of 
the law adjudged on Adam, as an effective, 
not a punishment, for his disobedience: for 
"in Adam's fall we sinned all." 

By -the -way, according to the account, 
Adam was no gentleman; he was the first cad. 
He told tales out of school; he kissed and told, 
and, if the truth were known, he doubtless 
lied! The Nazarene, it is said, was "the 
first true gentleman that ever breathed." 
He was the first in quality — the Spiritual 
Aristocrat; Prince of All the Humanities. 
The first gentleman of the Old Testament, 
in point of time, was Abimelech, a king of 
the Philistines, who dwelt in Gerar. 

How to reverse the judgment visited on our 
first parents has been a world's puzzle. Some 
have kicked against the goads and broke the 
entail by a common recovery, have volun- 
tarily abdicated manhood and womanhood 
to escape, have side-stepped to avoid the 
blow, and are saints! Yet the vestal mother 

76 



of Romulus and Remus was buried alive, 
and "nephews" have been numerous. Single- 
blessedness in such case was the failure; yet 
marriage is declared by some socialists to be a 
monopoly! The latter seem to seek some 
indeterminate-sentence method to modify the 
judgment for Adam's fall. Had we not better 
seek a reversal of the transgressive force of 
our first progenitors by the generation of a 
second Spiritual Adam; and so find a com- 
pensation, if not a satisfaction ? Can we not 
take the consequences and rejoice in it ? 
Can't we Adamites eat our bread in the 
sweat of our brows and joy in the work, and 
you Eveites bear the children of mated true- 
love, not the offspring of convenience or of 
the fierce cries of Edenic desire, and so breed 
temples for souls ? 

You have heard the song of the seventeen- 
year locust, the Cicada ? The egg-child falls, 
a speck of down, from its cradle in the tender 
branch of the tree, its orphanage home, and 
burrows far into the ground, where it sum- 
mers and winters itself as a worm, and then 
a beetle, until seventeen years have passed. 
Then on the very day, the hour appointed, 
through all the under- world the prophesied 
77 



reveille summons from under every green 
tree in the land the now armored host of 
Cicadae to arise and fight its battle up to 
sunshine and the renewal of its race. It 
marches, assaults, and storms the barricading 
earth walls and is in Eden! There it hangs 
its spears and shields on the rough bark of 
the trees, emerges from its coat of mail — a 
legion of winged Cupids, an army of Amorites. 
Embowered on every leafy twig the trouba- 
dour serenades the lady of his love, until the 
forest resounds with the palpitating refrain: 

"I live for love, for love I die." 
He tarries with her a few days, and then 

"The shrilling locust slowly sheathes 
His dagger voice and creeps away 
Beneath the brooding leaves where breathes 
The zephyr of the dying day," 

and with it dies. 

His lady-love lays her eggs in the nest- 
cradle carved by her in the tender twigs of 
the tree, and, having fulfilled the law by 
giving her life that the Cicadae shall not 
perish from the earth, she also dies. The 

78 



Cicada has been transmitted for another 
life-round. Within forty-two days from the 
moment of the sortie of the army of crusad- 
ers in the cause of the life more abundantly 
not a martyr remains, and the grove is silent 
once more — silent for another seventeen 
years. 

"Fear ye not, therefore; ye are of more 
value than many Cicadce." For Psyche is 
thine. 

If man — Man! — has arisen from the dust 
to become the prince of all animal life, to hold 
in his hands the power of life and death over 
all animate things, is there not in him a higher 
destiny yet in the eternal progress of Life ? 
Must he be satisfied with the gratification of 
the animal impulse to "multiply and re- 
plenish" ? True it is that nature has spread 
all its decoys to allure and its nets to capture 
every amorous Cupid. The humblest flower 
as well as the proudest oak puts forth in- 
numerable germs of life to reproduce other 
flowers, other oaks; the very stones do "cry 
out to raise seed to Abraham." Nature runs 
to seed-bearing. Every sense is appealed to 
and seems to have been evolved for the pur- 
pose of embodying life. Pollen and stigmata 
79 






call to each other; the lions of the mountain 
roar; the vegetable invites the animal and the 
mineral the vegetable world to assist; every 
atom in the universe runs to and fro in an 
agony of motion: all seeking life more abun- 
dantly. 

Yet shall Man remain King of Beasts only ? 
After all, is not this inbred impulse, desire, 
passion to perpetuate, a corollary to the uni- 
versal law of the persistence of force, and 
argues an inherent impulsion toward ever- 
lasting existence ? 

What are you not doing in the world ? 
The young woman, through her instinct of 
unexpended motherhood, is the natural teacher 
of children, while man teaches from his pro- 
pensity for mastery. In the appeal of help- 
less childhood to the sympathies of woman 
is the birth of altruism; and now, when the 
schoolmaster is abroad, it is the schoolmis- 
tress who is at home. She is discovering 
herself — the quasi mother of the great here- 
after. 

It is Inazo Nitobe, who, in his Bushido; or, 

Soul of Japan, says: "When character and 

not intelligence, when the soul and not the 

head, is chosen by a teacher for the ma- 

80 



terial to work upon and develop, his voca- 
tion partakes of a sacred character. 'It is 
the parent who has borne me; it is the teacher 
who makes me man.'" 

I know of a boy with his diploma from the 
University, who, when asked by his father, a 
minister of the Gospel, what he had chosen 
for his life-work, answered: "Father, I can't 
make a minister out of myself/' To which 
the reverend gentleman, laying his hand on 
his boy's head, replied: "Ah, no, my son; it 
is God who makes ministers of the Gospel." 

So it is of a woman-teacher, who, with 
pure, exalted ideals of being and living, 
hears the cry of the coming need and stress of 
her people, with Jephtha's daughter, answers: 
"Here am I, a willing sacrifice," and denies 
her personal self in fulfilling the answer. 
Such was once your intrepid answer, while 
here am I, pedicled to "the wandering foot." 

There is no altruism in fact, for in the 
scales of nature there are compensations 
against every deprivation. Yet can there be 
any greater self-denial for a woman to forego 
than the inherited demand of motherhood 
that she may minister to the crying needs of 
virtually parentless children — children whose 
81 



future, and the future of Society as well, de- 
pend upon the self-denying care of the teacher 
in the public schools ? And, if foregoing the 
personal longing to love and be loved by one 
alone, there must come to that teacher the 
satisfaction of having done something in the 
world, of having entered into the loving life 
of hundreds of her pupils, who shall rise up 
and call her blessed ? The teacher rocks the 
cradle of the future of her people. The 
true-born teacher has heard the coming, com- 
ing heralds of her nation's progress, and all 
the babes of promise leap within her at the 
sound of their announcing bugles. With 
Zeph, the old black seer, she cries: "The 
blood ansahs; I'se bawn with a caul! Fse 
bawn with a caul!" 

I hope you will pardon me for giving that 
significance to the concluding sentence of 
your last letter which its occultness deserves. 
Let me repeat it: "Please don't trouble your- 
self about 'your Mr. Call.' 'Speak for 
yourself, John." Now, it strikes me that 
"your Mr. Call" (forgive the mention of him 
by me this last time) is set upon a pedestal, 
a dodo on a consecrated altar dedicated to 
silence. In the awed hush of your worship 
82 



of his saintship his is the "lost name" — 
unutterable by my profane lips. You mean 
that I, wicked, must cease from troubling and 
give him (and you) a rest. I am to speak 
for myself, as I am no prophet for your most 
high and mighty sacredness, your little tin 
god! Your meaning is plain, though under 
covert of the quotation-marks to screen the 
rebuke. You omit from the quotation the 
present inquisitive, "Why don't you?" — pre- 
ferring the imperative to suit your mood. 
Although I accord you all the graces, purity, 
and loveliness of Priscilla, I have not the 
courage to be as modest as John Alden. 
You never, never (were you ?) so impatient 
with me, and I, no doubt, deserved to be — to 
be — reprimanded! Well, in your heaven 
this wicked one shall cease from troubling, 
and in my Capri the weary shall be at rest — 
I hope. I shall try to be content with the 
memory of our dear old companionship of 
thought and sympathy — the communion of 
the saints, one of whom I always hold you, 
though I am far from being another, except 
under your halo. 

In the case at bar I have a client, but, 
though I have always fought to the last ditch 

8 3 



for my clients, now an ancient maxim of the 
legal profession warns against a foolish 
championship of his cause by me; therefore 
let me flee to the mountain, to my dear old 
Hermit, and to that ever-fond kinship with 
you in things spiritual which hallows my 
rest. 

Faithfully yours, 






Capri, Italy, March 7, 190-. 
My dear : 



* * 



I am sorry if anything in my last letter 
offended you — you do not mention my out- 
break against the nameless one; and that is 
ominous (I might say "omni-ous"), for your 
letter, now before me, seems as if cut short by 
a frost. But frosted cake is all the sweeter, 
and the sweetness of your cake is in your in- 
quiry: "When are you coming home ?" 
The inference is that I should come, though 
you assign no reason why. There is only 
one reason which could appeal to me, and 
that is too unreasonable for me to think of. 



"In Capri s land I'll take my stand, 
And live and die in Capri!" 

For I find this hospitable southland is most 
interesting — to me. Though it is of stone, its 
heart is mysteriously tender. It has had its 
tragedy, even in later times. It is said that, 
in a raid by a band of Saracens from across 
the narrow sea, some years ago, when it land- 
ed to rob, and to rapt the fair women for 
their harems and the children for the Tunis- 
ian slave-market, the inhabitants, as of old, 
sought the security of the cavern under the 
old castle on Castiglione. The cavern, or 
grotto, is approached by a foot -wide path 
along the face of a bare cliff several hundred 
feet above the sea, where one person at the 
entrance of the cave has only to push the 
intruder a hand's-breadth to hurl him down 
the abyss. Most of the people had made 
their entry into safety, when one young man 
at the beginning of the path tarried to ward 
off the pursuers from a beautiful young 
woman who was about to enter the narrow 
passage. He chivalrously held them at bay 
until "Heloise" escaped into the cavern, but 
her defender and rescuer himself fell victim, 

85 



overpowered by numbers, and was left man- 
gled and for dead on the mountain-side. 

Whether or not this incident has any rela- 
tion to my "little story" of the organist and 
the lady, I will repeat what my informant 
said: "We know very little, suspect a great 
deal, guess at some things." While I cannot 
ask my Hermit, for there is about him a silent 
forbidding of personalities as too trivial for 
consideration, yet I believe — I dream, per- 
haps — that my saintly friend who so brave- 
ly champions Psyche would not hesitate to 
face an army of Saracens in defence of a 
woman. 

During this same raid a little shoemaker 
was pegging his way up the steeps toward 
the cavern when overtaken by the raiders, 
and was by them carried oversea a prisoner. 
His bereaved wife, with her "nine small 
children and one at the breast," pleaded 
with the good church people of Capri to ran- 
som him. In a year or two the money was 
sent, and the son of Crispin was returned 
and received with joy and fatted chickens. 
He seemed pleased with his reception, and, 
in his character as Munchausen, he reflected 
honor on the original until he began to believe 
86 



his own fairy tales, was reduced to the neck 
of the chickens, and was "on his uppers" 
— -to speak professionally. Alas, one morn- 
ing he was missing! He had learned the 
trick. He had "folded his tent like the 
Arabs and as silently stole away" — to get his 
share of the ransom and rejoice his two 
Saracen wives, fulfilling the adage of his trade: 
"Let the shoemaker stick to his last." 

Notwithstanding the pie-crustian short- 
ness of your last note (you had "no time to 
write a letter"), yet it was long on recondite 
inquiries. You "wish to know what the 
Hermit means by saying that the resurrection 
of Christ was a proof of the essential quality 
of the Spirit, the Spiritual Soul — the Christ 
within us"; and you also "wish to learn what 
he knows of the relation of the Spirit to the 
Animal-Man." Yet I have been hinting 
that yours was a short note! 

Although I cannot question my Aged 
One about his younger life, I have continued 
to inquire, and he has continued to respond, 
concerning the life spiritual in which he is 
almost wholly absorbed, and from time to 
time his responses have fallen into the lines 
which I have tried to remember, and in 

87 



which I hope you will find, in some sort, a 
solution of the problems you present. To 
begin with, the other evening he made a 
resume of the whole subject of matter and 
spirit. I was glad to listen, and now am the 
more so, because it may help you as an 
answer to your note of inquiries. 

He began: "What is mind ? The simplest 
exposition is, that Mind is a result. Thought 
is born of the Spirit and Matter. Given the 
Spirit and the Animal-Man, the former 
acting in and upon, or, as some say, over- 
shadowing the latter, engenders an activity 
of perception, cognition, with consequent 
association of the informations obtained, by 
comparison, contrast, reasoning; and thus 
man has a mind, memory, knowledge. Mind 
thus becomes the instrument through which 
the soul takes cognizance of things, experi- 
ments with matter. It is the antennae with 
which the soul seeks nutriment. 

" So our thoughts are born. They depend 
upon the heredity both of our overshadowing 
spirit and of our bodies. We may escape the 
easy, indolent following of the mere animal 
desires by giving the lead to the spirit, de- 
veloping the consciousness of it, bringing it 



by a life of work and faith to be an ever- 
abiding presence within, so that it becomes no 
longer an * overshadowing/ an * over-soul,' 
but an active * Christ within us, the hope of 
glory'; an existing quality — not quantity — 
of Eternal Life. Denying Fate, we weave 
our Destiny — the certain -final effect of ef- 
ficient causes. 

"Our destiny is in our own hands, if we 
have the will to do our Master's will. The 
Spirit ever stands at the door and knocks. 
Conscience is the latch. Every one can open 
the door by lifting the latch — if he will. 
Jesus — the exemplified Christ for us — stood 
among us, divine in and because of the per- 
fection of the Spirit. In this He was at one 
with the Supreme, with God. The perfect 
Spirit is the Only — not the only thing, for 
spirit, although it is a substance, is no thing 
in the popular terms of matter — the 'Only 
Begotten Son of God.' It is the 'Man in 
Our Image.' To utterly quench this Spirit, 
put out its lighting fire, is to 'die the death'; 
to abjure, to deny this Spirit — this whole, 
perfect Spirit, this whole, Holy Ghost within 
us — is to strive against and destroy the 
eternizing principle of our present life, and 

7 8 9 



it leaves us to go on in a purely human-animal 
existence, with the Spirit grieved, though 
present ceasing to strive with us; and, finally, 
when physical death comes — or even before 
— the Spirit * returns to God who gave it.' 
The Soul has committed suicide. 'And 
every one who shall speak a word against the 
Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; unto 
him who blasphemeth against the Holy 
Ghost, it shall not be forgiven/ In such a 
case, what becomes of the result of the con- 
nection of such a spirit and such a rejecting 
human-animal ? There must be some effect 
caused by such a connection — the life lived, 
the body of desire, the personality. 

"The man-animal has lived, has been a 
person, has had an animal-soul, and, so far 
as the Spirit has been resident, the beginnings 
of a human-soul. This animal-soul must 
have an existence hereafter, for it is a some- 
thing; memory and remains of reason be- 
long to it, but it is a shell — the Spirit, the 
eternal fire divine, having been trampled out. 
It thereafter is an insane person babbling 
of illusion, a person obsessed of the past, 
possessed of a demon — his own. 

"To that incorrigible is reserved the 
90 



'second death/ the condition and effect of 
the 'sin against the Holy Ghost/ The 
quality of continuing, which gives eternal 
life, repudiated, has withdrawn itself. Such 
a personality may linger long among the 
shades by the river Styx, but having no 
obolus to pay Charon, the ferryman, he 
wanders maundering on the shore. He is of 
those dead, according to St. John, to be 
'cast into the lake of fire; this is the second 
death/ Even in this life he is like the 
Church at Sardis, to whom it was said: 'I 
know thy works, that thou hast a name, that 
thou livest, and art dead.' But of the human- 
soul, attaching itself to and so being eternized 
by the Spirit that quickeneth, the savor of 
life unto life, it is said: 'He that overcometh 
shall not be hurt by the second death.' To 
him who overcometh his desires for the en- 
joyment of the pleasure of sense as the end 
and purpose of this present life, who uses all 
things, without abusing any, as a means of 
clothing the spirit with the experiences of 
this life, enriching it with loving action, all 
things are given, even eternal life. Spirit 
is that quality of the Life of the Universe, 
which is from the beginning — the everlasting. 
9i 



The destiny of man is to become of that 
quality. As there is no annihilation of sub- 
stance — only change of its forms — it follows 
that whatever is, was and shall be. It is for 
man to acquire the everlasting form, to gather 
the immortelle from the gardens of God. 
If the animal-man develops, acquires, or at- 
tains to a spiritual -soul, which is of what 
may be called the divine quality capable of 
surviving without change of form — a Son- 
of-Man become a Son-of-God — the mortal 
will have 'put on immortality,' the everlast- 
ing substance of life will have been absorbed, 
assimilated, by the man, and he will become 
individually everlasting. The Son-of-David, 
descended of a Kingly strain, of a peculiar 
people, was doubtless one among millions 
in bodily perfection — a fit temple for the 
indwelling of the Spirit of all Life. It was 
objected by the Pharisees that He ate and 
drank with publicans and sinners. This was 
after His body had been cleansed by the 
trials in the wilderness and perfected for the 
indwelling of the Spirit by its thirty years' 
apprenticeship. His body became a temple 
through all the portals of which His Spiritual 
Soul shone in the splendor of the trans- 
.92 



figuration. He so overcame bodily condi- 
tions that all men looking up to Him may feel 
that kin-throb of the divine Spirit of Life, 
may become conscious of heirship with Him 
to eternal life, and be free from the desires of 
the flesh by the inbreeding of that Spirit! 
It is this Spirit of all Life which is the 'Lamb 
slain from the foundations of the world ' by 
being embodied in flesh; which was in- 
breathed 'in the beginning,' triumphing over 
its environment, arising from the cerements 
of burial, overcoming the illusions of man- 
ifested creation, resurrected a Redeemer; 
which in its perfection in the life, death, and 
resurrection of our Lord we must seek, and, 
having found, shall no more see death. Why 
did the Spirit descend into matter ? Why 
this mystery of redemption 'into which the 
angels desired to look'? If we, 'become as 
little children,' may make so great question- 
ings; inquire into the genesis of man; seek 
to discover why the Only Begotten — the 
Spirit — should be subjected to the created 
Adam, and why the involution of the Spirit 
into matter should include an evolution of 
the Spirit out of matter, we shall enter the 
never-ending spiral of the circle which in- 
93 






volves an evermore seeking for more life, 
and shall approach Him not knowing what 
manner of man we shall finally become, but 
assured as we do approach we shall be like 
unto Him. The divine order on earth, first 
natural then spiritual, resolves all things back 
as substantial Spirit — the Logos — though, as 
St. Paul says, 'with much groanings of the 
Spirit making intercession for the creature.' 
The ray of the Spirit strikes the prism of this 
life, is refracted and separated into its con- 
stituent colors, adorning the tearful sky of 
earth for the time, yet gathering all to itself 
'when the storm of life is past.' 

"However hypotheses may differ as to 
whether any particular soul existing in the 
body came as a direct special emanation, or 
creation, from God into that particular body; 
or came through successive reincarnations 
from such a direct, though incipient, original 
emanation; or is an evolution from the prin- 
ciple of life force universally infused into all 
matter, and at last, by progressive experiences, 
working its spiral way upward to Him — the 
Living Head — finally to become a conscious, 
living, Spiritual-Soul, we may rest — italiciz- 
ing according to the light received — with the 
94 



written: 'And the Lord God formed man 
of the dust of the ground and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life; and man be- 
came a living soul.' When he shall so be- 
come, shall he not be able to breed a strain 
of everlasting son-souls ? The effect of 
'Adam's fall' may cite us to the cause and 
light us to the remedy. The flood of genera- 
tion from Adam is turned back by the re- 
generation of the Spirit, as manifested in the 
Christ. Sin is generic. To be 'born in 
sin,' to be 'totally depraved,' is to be subject 
to the flesh — to the material — to be un- 
regenerate. The development and realiza- 
tion in consciousness of the Spirit is a re- 
demption from the flesh, a 'growth in grace,' 
an involution of the Christ in man. In the 
spiritual-soul is the quality of eternal life, 
and in it resides the potency of all things. 
Redemption from sin is the acquirement of 
the quality — the condition — of non-sinning; 
it is the 'new birth' by the regeneration of the 
Spirit in man. This quality of Eternal Life 
is of individual experience, to be sought with 
patient obedience and courage. It is a state 
of being. Will must join with desire and as- 
piration to achieve it. It is a gift from above, 
95 



but its reception and realization in conscious- 
ness is upon condition of earnest personal 
seeking — ' knock and it shall be opened/ 
Simon, the sorcerer, could not purchase it. 
This individual responsibility to seek it can- 
not be shirked or shared. Neither custom 
nor fashion, authority nor servitude, can di- 
vest the right or absolve from the duty of 
every one to strive for individual everlasting 
life. The acquirement of the quality of not 
sinning may be called the 'state of holiness'; 
as the personal consciousness of the incom- 
ing of the spirit may be termed ' conversion ' — 
' the new birth.' While heaven is a state of 
condition, not a place, what makes it is the 
quality of the inhabitant. 'The Kingdom 
of Heaven is within you.' Nature, with man 
a part, climbs without haste, irresistibly sure, 
to complexity, the final step embracing all 
before. There is naught in the Universe 
which is not in Man — its epitome, its mi- 



crocosm. 



The Egyptian conceived the idea of the 
irresistible force of the Spirit of Life when he 
set up the Sphinx — 'the Champion Spirit 
of the World,' 'with calm, eternal eyes gazing 
straight on,' and with nourishing breasts — 

9 6 



a symbol of the persistence and fruitfulness 
of that Force. 

"Every atom of the Universe, subject to the 
Spirit of Life, has an intelligent purpose, 
adapting itself to its environment, pursuing 
that purpose in the way of least resistance. 
That intelligent purpose progressively be- 
comes instinct, and, by heredity, perpetuates 
itself, with increasing tendencies as intelli- 
gence accumulates, the fittest for the environ- 
ment surviving. As instinct meets obstacles 
in its subservience to the persistence of force, 
endeavoring to obey this law of its being, 
reason is the result and reward. Thereupon 
in his progress animal-man reaches up to 
and embraces Psyche, the soul, as his help- 
mate toward immortality. 

"As Psyche develops by experience with 
man, the time comes when she may exist 
alone, without the cruder grossness of flesh 
and blood as an informer and interpreter, 
and, with the spiritual body as her habitat, 
seek an ethereal home. Can we conceive a 
higher intelligence than that force which 
pervades all matter — the divine wisdom in 
the Life of the Universe ? 

"Why should not this Life be aggregated in 
97 




the highest complexity of matter, man ? 
And, if it should be, why may not man be- 
come conscious of its indwelling force and 
use it to discover and forward his own 
spiritual progress as an individual entity, 
to attain and be of the quality of eternal 
life — to be an everlasting immortal: And 
when he shall become and be such, why 
should he not be an intelligent force, as a 
radium of light, an electron permeating 
matter ? Nor would it be in derogation of the 
possession by man of such immortality that 
he should finally deny to himself further en- 
try into human life on earth, or to anew his 
experiences of the unrealities of material life, 
but should prefer to become a Spiritual 
Sphinx! To such an immortalized man life 
and death would be only changes of environ- 
ment. 

"It is a function of such a soul to exist 
without the human body as well as within 
it. While the body is habitable the soul has 
the possible power of egress and ingress, 
and by means of that vehicle, by some called 
the astral body, it may assume bodily shape 
and presence without as well as when resi- 
dent in the body. 

98 



"Where was Christ during the burial of His 
body? He, his spiritual-soul, was ' preach- 
ing to the souls in bondage.' That highest 
spiritual potency manifest in Jesus, the 
Christ, was in Him an embodied entity, 
being of the essential quality of Eternal Life. 
It was something, a resident, incorporeal 
substance. It existed on earth while His body 
was in the sepulchre — apart from yet of the 
body. It went into the middle under-world, 
Hades; into Hades, the world of spirits, 
where souls bound by affection for those yet 
living, where souls filled with the unsatis- 
fied passions of life, where souls released 
from their bodies by untimely death through 
disease, accidental or suicidal violence — sent 
into Hades 'half made up/ have not entered 
into their rest nor yet desire to enter therein, 
and so are 'in prison'; maybe, in course of 
purgation; to these the liberated Christ, the 
Spiritual personage, as a celestial presence, 
preached. He descended into hell — Hades 
— and 'loosed those which were bound,' 
not to return to earth but to pass forward. 
He held the keys of both death and Hades. 
Lazarus went through the gate of death, but 
not of Hades. When the stone was rolled 
99 









away from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, 
Jesus went ' before them into Galilee/ as 
He had told His disciples and Mary; and it is 
questionable whether His body of flesh ever 
after its entombment was seen by His disciples. 
His public work, His work for the ages was 
finished. Upon the cross He had yielded up 
His life on earth with a recitative of the open- 
ing cry of that singularly appropriate script- 
ure, the twenty - second Psalm: 'My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?' That 
Psalm, if read to its triumphant conclusion, 
vindicates His quotation from despair. While 
filled with the woes of the crucifixion, it was 
an adoption of the Psalm as a prophecy, 
a last testament of His own character and 
final victory. Afterward, in the garden, 
Mary did not recognize Him. To the two 
disciples, with Him in a walk of threescore 
furlongs to Emmaus, though their hearts 
burned within them as He talked by the way, 
He was not known save, at last, in the break- 
ing of bread. Then ' their eyes were opened 
and they knew Him; and He vanished from 
their sight.' The same evening, in Jerusalem, 
He appeared to the disciples, the doors being 
shut for fear of the Jews, and the disciples, 
ioo 



though terrified, recognized the Lord. A 
visitation was made by Him in like manner 
a week later. It was His speech which made 
Him known to them. At the sea of Tiberias, 
whither He went 'before them into Galilee/ 
He was not at first recognized. Upon the 
Mount of Ascension He ascended — disap- 
peared in the air — 'in the clouds of heaven.' 
These manifestations as such were substantial. 
The idea that they were merely the visions 
of self-deluded and credulous persons is as 
chimerical as the phenomena doubted. Must 
it not have been His phantasm, simulacrum, 
double, bodiless body, astral body — the spir- 
itual body, under the control of His own 
conscious spirit, walking, speaking, eating 
even, substantially flowing out of His body 
of flesh and blood — of the whereabouts of 
which body conjecture has no facts to present. 
Between the several separate times when He 
manifested Himself we have no account of 
Him whatever. St. John always speaks of 
His appearances after the burial as mani- 
festations, revealings, of Himself. 

"Light is a force in motion; we do not see 
its shine save as its rays are obstructed in their 
progress and reflected; so spirit, which is a 

IOI 



formless force, to be visible, must come in 
contact with, or invest, some material object. 
"As the imponderables, heat, electricity, 
magnetism, are resolvable into each other, 
are correlatives, there must be a matrix of 
them all, out of which they are differentiated 
by vibration — a mother of many children, a 
complexity of one in which they all reside. 
So it must be that there is a force of life be- 
hind all motion, a life that vibrates through 
all the Universe. In the vibrations of that 
force of life is the telegraph of souls — in and 
out of the body. May not the blood be 
vitalized by that force in motion, and that 
force be the thing which makes the difference 
between the living and the dead ? He who 
has the power to put that force in motion 
may act as a battery and evolve and transmit 
it, 'For whether it is easier to say, Thy sins 
are forgiven; or to say, Arise and walk? 
But that ye may know that the Son of Man 
hath power on earth to forgive sins, I say 
unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed and go 
into thy house.' Disease, the consequence 
and the burden of transgression (sin), the 
hireling of death, is the changing of the form 
of life, not its activity. The decay of one 
102 



form is the insurgence of another — a change 
in the direction of force, a transformation of 
motion. This constant progression of forms 
is the recurrent sowing and harvest — Saturn 
devouring his children. The scenes are 
shifted, the play — the play goes on. Each 
scene is prolonged until the part it localized 
is fully played out. Rest is but the coming 
into equilibrium with the environment; and 
motion is only motion by relation. Up and 
down are not opposed to each other. The 
balloonist is not conscious of moving as he 
rests on the bosom of the wind, except as he 
observes the earth beneath or the clouds 
about him. All earthly objects appear to 
rest as they yield to and are at one with the 
force which carries the earth in its orbit. 
Gravitation is the seeking for harmony with 
the motion of force. The harmony of nat- 
ure is the unity of direction of force. The re- 
sistance of the air to force is the cause of its 
vibration as sound; the air is not the vehicle 
of force to carry sound : it is the resistance 
of the air to force which causes the vibration 
known as sound. Behind all motion lies 
force — the Divine Energy. It may well be 
imagined that the various forms of force must 
103 



be conserved in one, of which they are but 
part and into which they may be resolved. 
Each atom ceaselessly whirls within its 
sphere; the earth revolves about the sun, 
and the sun advances in step with a multitude 
of other suns on his grand round, followed 
by his courtier suite. May not it yet be 
found that the activities of all are as one, 
the mode of motion of the atom in its ratio 
the same with the shining hosts of the firma- 
ment ? It must be in the small as in the 
great. To find it is to unveil the Infinite 
Force, 'that Power, outside ourselves, which 
makes for righteousness.' Sin is want of con- 
formity to that Force. So love is the gravita- 
tion of souls — toward God. 

t"As it is the hinted suggestion of modern 
science that all matter may be resolved into 
one element, it is but a sequence that it is the 
evolution, the out-breathing, of an initial 
Force — the One. If electricity is life, does 
it think r No, the Smith is behind the ham- 
mer. Thought is a force which can project 
a vibration. The Thinker is the god in the 
machine. 

"All things are possible to the Spirit of 
Life — this out-breathed Force — to be excited 
104 



to motion through man by Faith. 'If ye 
have faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall 
say unto this mountain: Remove hence to 
yonder place, and it shall remove; nothing 
shall be impossible unto you.' Such faith 
must be a force capable of exciting atomic 
action. May not atomic vibration be awak- 
ened by the will of the spiritual minded ? 

"Ordinarily we do not distinguish between 
opinion, belief, and faith. Opinion is tenta- 
tive; asserting a fact to be upon the known 
evidence, but with an implied reservation of 
final decision upon newly discovered evidence. 
Belief rests upon the known evidence with a 
conclusive finding that there is no other 
variant, and this belief regulates conduct. 
Belief, in the sense in which Jesus employed 
it, has been defined to be 'that judgment of 
the human soul which vindicates the absolute 
verity of a suggestion; that condition of the 
fully enlightened soul which unhesitatingly 
recognizes such verity.' Prayer, by a per- 
son's concentrated contemplation of and ap- 
peal to the Supreme, is a means of lifting the 
soul into spiritual condition — one of the 
mind's athletics whereby the soul is prepared 
for insight, for strength, for help to believe, 
8 105 



through which faith may be obtained. There 
must be a consciousness of power in a man 
possessed of faith. It is the man who has 
received faith — the divine efflux of the Spirit 
of Life, the 'God in us' — who may remove 
the mountain. 

"'As a man thinketh, so he is.' The 
thoughts of God; who can think them? 
They are manifest in matter — as above, so 
below; on earth as it is in heaven, in the small 
as in the great. 

"Only as we are fitted by condition, so can 
we receive; and as we are able, so we shall 
receive. 'Unto every one which hath shall 
be given; and from him that hath not, even 
that he hath shall be taken away from him' 
— that is, the unused capacity to have. 

"Knowledge of the truth 'cometh not by 
observation.' It is the gift of the Spirit. 
A kernel of wheat may lie for thousands of 
years in an Egyptian pyramid, and when 
taken out may germinate and grow to a 
harvest. So may a soul in its fruition of this 
life lie in Hades, and, retaining a fertilization 
of the divine Spirit of Life, in the ages, come 
forth into growth again upon the earth and 
begin anew its spiral climb to everlasting life. 
106 



Ignorance is the home of the supernatural. 
There is nothing supernatural to the wise." 
My Hermit is not a priest, nor is he a 
preacher. He's simply a thinker for think- 
ing's sake, and a meditative talker. I put 
a question or two touching your inquiries, 
and out of the quaint fulness of his thought 
there springs the flow of words which I have 
pitchered from time to time and now pour out 
to you, until I am afraid you have dropped 
your cup from utter weariness. 
Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, March 20, 190-. 

My dear : 

I see the dawning smile which ushers the 
awaiting dimple in your cheek, as you read 
of my enthusiasm for my dear Hermit, when 
you remember the 

"Waltzes, polkas, lancers, reels, and glides, 
Highland, schottische, quadrille, gallops, slides, 
. . . How we danced them all!" 
107 



Oh, how we swam and swirled with the 
swing of the violin in valse bleu! 

"And it's all over now." . . . ? I am glad 
if you do remember, and if the smile shall 
ripple into glad, gay laughter when you think 
of the good times 

"O* Life! we've had long together, 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather." 

But I hope it shall be ages before "in some 
brighter clime I shall bid you good-morn- 
ing!" 

You say that "at least the influence of the 
Ancient will teach me reverence for grave 
matters, if one is to believe what he says 
about the resurrection." There, I see Cupid's 
bow pouted over Little Teacher's firm under 
lip as it closes over "grave matters." The 
earnestness of that straight guardian nose 
above bids me pause. If we really do believe 
in the life of the Spiritual-Soul apart from 
the body in an ascended Christ, why not be 
cheerful about "one who wraps the drapery 
of his couch about him and lies down to 
pleasant dreams"? Why always be going 
"down to the grave," or be going to "the 
108 



undiscovered country from whose bourne no 
traveller returns" ? For death "was not spoken 
of the soul," and "the grave is not its goal." 
As my Ancient says, "There is no up or 
down; it's all God!" What is the use of our 
tossing up the dirt in our road that we may 
walk in the falling dust ? " Pray, and in 
everything give thanks!" "Joy in tribula- 
tion," as a means if not a reward for well- 
doing; and know that we are in the world 
to stay and see it out! Why should we not 
run rejoicing as the sun of the morning than 
loiter with that Dolly Varden nun of the 
skies, "pale for weariness of climbing heaven"? 
"The laughter of man is the contentment of 
God !" The dying Irishman who, when asked 
by his friend whether the mourners should 
drink the wake-whiskey going to or coming 
from the cemetery, answered, "Whin goin', 
for I'll be wid ye thin," had a better com- 
prehension of grave affairs than those lugu- 
brians who are never so happy as when they 
are miserable, and who dote on the time when 
"the mourners go about the street and the 
grinding is low." The theological student 
who, when requested by his professor to give 
the exegesis of St. Paul's exclamation, "Now 
109 



death is swallowed up in victory/' said, 
" There are two lessons to be drawn — one 
patent, the other inferred: one that death is 
swallowed up in victory, and the other that 
it is swallowed down" You have your 
choice! 

"Oh, bold blue sky! Oh, keen glad wind! 
I wonder me if this may be ? 
That some fair day, leaving life behind, 

Our eyes shall view new land, new sea, 
So exquisite that, lo! with thrilling breath, 
We shall laugh loud for very joy of death." 

We will learn, "some sweet day," how to 
die as we now go to sleep; we will know, also, 
how to awake — and when! And this will 
be when we undoubtingly know 

"That life is ever Lord of death, 
And love can never lose its own." 

The face of the comfortably dead is won- 
derful for its peacefulness, its "strange aloof- 
ness and preoccupation." 

"Death smoothes the wrinkles of the past, and, 
somewhat 
. . . reveals the child forgot." 
no 



I doubt if my Hermit has given as clear a 
definition of faith as this, stated by St. Paul: 
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things unseen." Hope ex- 
presses both desire and expectation. You 
may desire, yet not expect. To expect you 
must have a basis of facts from experience 
sufficient to remove doubt from the mind, 
and this, with desire, is a reasonable ground 
for "things hoped for"; so, to have faith to 
heal or to remove mountains, you must also 
have in yourself the substance of things hoped 
for — the power to do so, which is "the evi- 
dence of things unseen"; without that you 
cannot expect to do anything. 

I suspected you would be surprised by my 
old friend's matter-of-fact treatment of the 
resurrection of our Lord. The truthfulness 
of the appearances to the disciples is shown 
by the ingenuousness of their narration, upon 
the assumption by them that the spiritual- 
soul may exist and be visible in the spiritual- 
body. He was dead by all the common 
tests of the time, but the power of resurrection 
was in the vitalizing energy of His will, which 
operated as a force to revive tissue. He 
had asserted His ability to rebuild the temple 
m 






of His body in three days; it was rebuilt 
between Friday evening and that Sunday 
dawn when He came forth from the tomb, to 
the terror and stupefaction of His Roman 
guard, which had been posted at the sepulchre 
to prevent His disciples carrying His body 
away by night. He, in His crucified body, 
went before them into Galilee. He could 
not in safety have been seen by the Jews of 
Jerusalem, for the decree of death would not 
have been satisfied. 

Many modern instances of both living and 
of recently dead persons projecting their 
"appearances" to a distance and being rec- 
ognized and conversed with have been 
proved. There is a very old and famous 
tapestry in the Galleria of the Arazzi in the 
Vatican which pictures the appearance of 
Jesus to His disciples as a "shade." This 
shows that the artist who designed the tapes- 
try sought to revive the idea conveyed by 
the New Testament. When Jesus appeared 
to His disciples in Galilee, St. Matthew re- 
lates that "when they saw Him they wor- 
shipped Him, but some doubted"; and St. 
John writes of the same event: "And none 
of the disciples durst ask Him, 'Who art 
112 



Thou ?' knowing that it was the Lord." 
Both St. Matthew and St. John convey the 
idea of timorous apprehension on the part of 
the disciples at the sight of the appearance. 
There was no such wonder, fear, or doubt at 
the grave of Lazarus, or in the house of 
Jairus, or in the street of the city of Nain, 
when the dead were raised. He was not rec- 
ognized as an actual flesh-and-blood man, 
but appeared with all the semblance of one, 
and invited the disciples to identify Him as 
such, and not as a mere ghost of the imagi- 
nation, when He came in unto them in Jeru- 
salem, "the doors being shut." 

You say: "If He appeared to His disciples 
as a mere shade, it takes all the force from 
the idea of the resurrection." But if it was 
an intelligent "shade" — the house of His 
mind, soul, the Spiritual-Soul in the Spiritual- 
Body — does not that prove the existence of the 
mind, the soul, apart from the flesh-and-blood 
body, as an existing entity resurgent from the 
common clay, and justifies your faith in the 
Christ as ever living ? This Imperial Per- 
sonage whose teachings, moral and ethical, 
are absolute edicts for all time, is and 
through the ages shall be a Spiritual Pres- 
"3 



ence ever living, preaching to all Souls in 
Bondage. 

You do not suppose that Jesus in His body 
of flesh and blood ascended ? The material 
flesh-and-blood body of the son of Mary 
was not the Christ of your hope. That He 
was able to manifest Himself on earth as a 
living Soul without that body is the proof of 
the immortality of that Soul. 

You are becoming a real theologue when 
you follow up your first interrogatory by a 
Socratian other: "If it be true that it was 
the ' spiritual-body* which ascended into the 
heavens, what becomes of the resurrection 
of the earth-body?" Let St. Paul answer: 

"Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; 
neither doth corruption inherit incorrup- 
tion. 

"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It 
is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorrup- 
tion; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in 
glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in 
power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised 
a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, 
there is also a spiritual body. So also it is 
written, The first Adam became a living 
114 



Soul. The last Adam became a life-giving 
spirit." 

So far as I am concerned, I don't care; 
earth to earth, dust to dust, and ashes to 
ashes with my body, so that I save my Soul. 
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and 
that which is born of the spirit is spirit." 
When Titus burned to ashes the Temple at 
Jerusalem, and the blood of the brave and 
only death-conquered Jews ran in floods 
about the Holy of Holies, it is said that, 
above the turmoil and roar of battle and 
flame, strange voices were heard in the air, 
sorrowful yet fateful: "Let us go hence." 

You further say: "Your Hermit does not 
admit or affirm that he has ever lived in the 
flesh on earth before his present incarnation. 
If he affirms it, what reason has he to know 
it ? Does he remember ?" 

No, he has neither admitted nor affirmed; 
yet he evidently believes that he has. I think 
this because of his firm assertion of his belief 
in the fact of the reincarnation and progress 
of souls. If he did admit or affirm, what 
conclusive proof would that be to you or me ? 
We would not rest content upon the word of 
belief even of so good and sincere a man; 
ii5 



we must have proof — something tangible to 
our reasonable intelligence; and he fully 
realizes the futility of such a mere expression. 
I might answer your question by asking: 
How would he give you such proof? How 
could you verify his experience ? No doubt 
he feels many suggestions foreign to all his 
experiences in this life which determine his 
intuitive loves and his hates (if the dear soul 
has any hates, even for the Saracens), so 
many limitations and inspirations to feeling 
and conduct, so many susceptibilities, for 
which he has no cause or reason whatever, 
and for which he can look for their source 
only in a previous incarnation. My Seer has 
passed that animal stage where thought is but 
the recurrence of fermentations of cellular 
conditions, evolving electrical currents in the 
billions of thought tracts with which a long 
excitation of sensory nerve action has criss- 
crossed the brain, as the scientific mate- 
rialists would have it. He has spiritual 
insight; his meditations are those of concen- 
trated intellections. His is not "the ecstatic 
stupor of the cow . . . chewing the cud of sweet 
and bitter fancies. " He has come to himself 
and said, "I will go to my father," leaving 
116 



the "husks that the swine did eat" — to — to 
those who like them! 

I can conceive how a person may attain a 
clear consciousness, a knowledge of former 
lives, not derivative from memory, but ac- 
quired by actual inspiration, which he may 
hesitate to assert. There are certain sacred- 
nesses which the soul (as well as the heart) 
may not profane by speech. They belong 
to the experiences of that sixth sense my old 
friend talks of; are the revelations no man 
may utter; for words are but the angels of 
the soul and many of them are fallen. "See 
thou tell no man " was a prescription for 
healing of which Jesus knew the psychical 
efficacy — the failure to follow which is the 
origin of doubt and then relapse. Henry 
Ward Beecher once denounced as sacrilegious 
those familiar but good-meaning people who 
slap a person on the back and say, "How's 
your soul ?" 

You say you are afraid you would "lose 
identity when born again into a strange, new 
body." Have you lost it in your present 
body ? Do you think you are you now ? The 
physicists say that we renew our tissues, 
our bones even, every seven years. Don't 
117 



you think your ego rather comfortably feels 
itself to be itself now after, say, three such 
renewals ? May I not venture to suppose 
that you vividly remember the personal 
events of your life, even some of your dreams, 
preceding all the three ? But it is not upon 
that remembrance only that you base your 
identity; it is rather upon your knowledge of 
the continued sameness, of the unintermittent 
continuity of your Self. You may compare 
your states of mind and feeling now with 
those, let me suppose, of last September! 
But you will not, by the mere act of memory, 
assume to test your identity. That any- 
thing is or was does not depend on memory. 
That you remember now depends on your 
present ability to reproduce the sensation 
of — of — our parting! That sensation may 
not affect you now, except as a passing 
memory — a has-been. 

You have spent one-fourth, at any rate, of 
your time in sleep; like that church at Sardis, 
you were living yet dead — asleep; yet your 
Thinker knows itself to be itself after for- 
getting itself for seven years of your present 
life. Why should you fear to prolong that 
sleep, or to go to sleep and, when you awake, 
118 



get into a new body as you shall deserve to 
choose; for it must be the logical conclusion 
of the Aged One's doctrine of cause and effect, 
the sowing and reaping, that you will get 
your deserts — with some of us, that's the rub ! 

The genealogy of sin as an infraction of 
moral or physical law, under the operation 
of the rule of cause and effect, embraces the 
past as well as the present life, as shown by 
the story of the "man blind from his birth," 
concerning whom the disciples of Jesus asked: 
"Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
that he was born blind ?" The Master 
answered: "Neither hath this man sinned, 
nor his parents; but that the works of God 
should be manifest in him." Thereupon He 
healed the man. But why the question ? 
It must have been upon the presentation of 
the blind man as an object-lesson of a previous 
teaching by the Master, and was shown to 
be an exception proving the rule; the "sin" 
was an accidental sin, a prenatal mishap, 
for which neither the parents nor the blind 
man was morally responsible. 

I fear you will have to be content to believe 
that each soul must come to have within itself 
the subconsciousness of previous existence, 
119 



because any extrinsic record of a previous 
life on earth after a thousand years or so of 
"heaven" can hardly be preserved, and 
memory of the sensations of any previous 
lives on earth will only have as their heirs by 
spiritual heredity the unconscious suggestions 
they have in the present life. To a soul in- 
born of the Spirit of Life there must come in 
some transcendent state of intellection a 
conscious continuity of individuality inde- 
pendent of the shell-body, which, as in the 
Hermit, knows itself to be itself — a child ever- 
lasting from its progenition, and not a gross 
phenomenon of matter. 

Solely because a man-animal stands erect 
on his hind legs, and, reasoning upon his 
experiences, feeds, clothes, and shelters him- 
self, he has not a continuing "soul to save," 
nor can he "call his soul his own" so as to be 
capable of living endlessly; but to become 
so he must involve the highest into his lower 
condition by reaching up and bringing down 
into himself the Spirit of Life. "All good gifts 
come from above." Evolution is a cry for 
help ! Growth is the ability to add to one's sejf. 

My old Philosopher and Friend does not 
ignore physical heredity in his exaltation and 
120 



prophecy of the everlastingness of the spiritual 
entity; for, upon my suggestion that his 
genealogy of the spirit or soul in man ought 
to have some correlation in man's material 
body, to keep pace with his spiritual uplift, 
he said: "These bodies of ours are instinct 
with the man-animal germ since his emergence. 
Each of the millions of cells in our flesh and 
bones has a history, and by specific functions 
of the brain carrying those sensations to the 
Thinker a character has been formed by that 
history. This character is transmitted and 
specialized from generation to generation, 
and each, in its degree, is intelligently re- 
lated to others and becomes more complex 
as well as distinctive — a microcosm of all 
past experiences — just as the Thinker, the 
Psyche, has its past history and character; 
with the vital difference that Psyche has 
assumed control and wardship, and finally 
has outgrown the body." 

I can readily trace your wheat-gold hair, 
born of the sun and snow, nurtured by the 
winds of northern seas, to Anglo-Saxon an- 
cestry, and there is a heraldry can blazon 
your title to that remote Adam (or to those 
remoter Adamses) who first stood erect and 
9 121 






enforced service from all his congeners of the 
slime ? But you are an heir, a progenition, a 
composite picture of all the lives of your 
fathers who have lived during all the years 
since. I am sure yours is a noble strain of 
Thinkers and Doers. Your Psyche! Alas, 
of what does it not assume wardship ? 

You know the story of Psyche — the story 
painted on the wall and ceiling of the Farnese 
Palace ? It is of her triumph and translation 
to the home of the gods through the inter- 
vention of Cupid and her marriage to him. 
It is a personification of the soul perfected by 
love. Shall not Psyche, through love, create 
a new heaven and a new earth, and Man, 
immensely gianted, become the sum of all 
creatures ? The conception of Christ as the 
Son-of-Man is a prodigious step toward the 
realization of that final consummation. 

You "wish to know why man should not 
have been created a spiritual-soul in the first 
instance; why he was made 'a little lower 
than the angels' to begin with?" And you 
add: "If he had been made perfect in the 
beginning, it would have saved a world of 
trouble." "Well," as Dundreary says, "that 
is another of those things no fellow can find 

122 



out" — yet! Would you have him an angel? 
Beware of Lucifer! But you might ask why 
all flowers do not grow spontaneously in the 
air, or on your hat, and all of them your 
favorite roses! 

"Why" is the word of curiosity, of prog- 
ress, and in the long-run is answered; and 
that is what faith in God means — the as- 
surance of the answer. The Life of the Uni- 
verse is being lived; we can grow with it, or we 
can cumber the ground. You know the say- 
ing, "A letter unanswered answers itself." All 
letters are answered in the progress of that life. 

The homely speech, "It will all come out in 
the washing," is but another expression of 
that common faith in the ultimate explana- 
tion — the cleansing from all doubt. 

Faithfully yours, 



Capri, Italy, April 2, 190-. 

My dear : 

This afternoon I wandered up my accus- 
tomed route and had a seance with my 
Ancient of Days at his friendly door. All the 
123 



island is abloom, and was reflected in the 
cheeriness of him in whose veins the wine of 
life is renewed with the flowering spring. I 
do not wait for your reply to my last letter 
before giving you a new personal experience, 
and trying to answer how long a person's re- 
incarnations were to be kept up "as a going 
concern," and what they have to do with the 
"spoilt child." 

From what I can make out from the de- 
tached emanations, so to speak, of my old 
friend, rewards and punishments as we style 
them, cause and effect in his vocabulary, 
are meted out through reincarnations, and 
throughout them the human soul is ever 
helped toward perfection by the constant 
effluence of the* Life of the Universe — the 
Spiritual Force of God. The survival of the 
fittest (the fightest, if you will) is but the 
selection by this Force of the means of prog- 
ress. It is a good deal like the scholar 
working his way, by excelling in learning, to 
the head of his class with the aid of the 
teacher. The Soul continually grows into 
the sacred image of the Father — until it can 
say: "I and my Father are one," and then 
the cycle of life on earth is complete. As 
124 



belief in eternal life — a self-consciousness of 
it — is the muniment of an individual's title 
thereto, so disbelief is a negation, a dis- 
possession of it. Yet an individual, self- 
conscious of eternal life in himself, may seek 
reincarnation for the purgation of effects 
caused by his former lives. That is, an in- 
dividual may be entitled to live everlastingly, 
but his happiness may require reincarnations 
to free himself from previous ill-doings — from 
the effect of "deeds done in the body," for 
it is by good deeds that every man is to 
attain happiness. Reincarnation will cease 
when the soul is in perfect accord with the 
Life of the Universe — at one with God, and 
that at-oneness will be when it can be said 
of it as of one of old: "Enoch walked with 
God; and was not, for God took him." Was 
not Jesus of Nazareth a Son of Man become 
a Son of God, an individual entity possessed 
of the quality of Everlasting Life, sinless as 
well, and, as such exalted personage, may He 
not, if He will, reincarnate in a human body 
as easily as He may dwell in the ether — in fine, 
may He not "come again"? General Lew 
Wallace would never consent to the drama- 
tization of Ben-Hur for the stage until the 
125 



Nazarene should appear only as a light, in 
which the lepers were healed, exemplifying 
the scripture that "in Him was life; and the 
life was the light of men." 

I asked the Hermit, " If the Kingdom of 
God is within us, and is a condition of the 
soul, will that condition involve any powers, 
as of healing, or of obtaining knowledge, 
illumination of the understanding ?" 

He answered: "To attain that condition 
the first thing is to obey the command, 'Love 
God with all your heart and your neighbor 
as yourself.' Then there comes an effluence 
from the source of all life which transfuses 
and enlightens the Soul. Why or how I do not 
know; I simply know it is so by being con- 
scious of its inspiriting power, which each 
soul must 'feel to know.'" 

"What is the effect upon one in his rela- 
tion to his fellows ?" I asked. 

"Well, practically, it is a prompting to go 
about doing good." 

"Then," I returned, "I suppose a man, so 
conditioned, lives by what he feeds on, as 
'Every man is the son of his own works'; 
but has such a man any extraordinary, not 
to say supernatural or occult, power ?" 
126 






"That is a matter you will know more of 
when you attain to it," was his answer. But 
he resumed: "'Eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard . . . the things which God hath prepared 
for them that love Him' — and, my son, let me 
add, for them you love." 

I scarcely think his addenda was intended 
specifically for myself, but was applicable to 
one who should love his neighbor as him- 
self; yet I doubt not that eye hath not seen, 
nor ear heard, the things prepared for him you 
love. He is a very loving as well as lovely 
old man, and was quite rhapsodical when he 
continued: "Love is the universal harmony, 
the cohesive force of all matter, and in 'the 
sweet influences of the Pleiades' all the stars 
of heaven feel its centring force; and why 
should the Soul of man be ashamed to ac- 
knowledge and glory in this power to love 
which centres in the very God ?" 

"Then," I added, "it is worth while to 
love even for love's own sake." 

With a quizzical glance at me, he rejoined : 
"Yes, if it will keep you in Capri!" 

I sat there beside him, warm in the sun- 
setting, for some time, thankful that the dear 
old man was in any wise pleased to have me 
127 




remain in the island, while the blithe air over 
blossoming vines brought up the perfume 
of the springtime from the underlying vine- 
yards, until, turning to him, I found him with 
closed eyes, relaxed at ease in his arm-chair, 
lapsed into a state of dreaminess with a seem- 
ing consciousness that he was dreaming, to 
judge from the placid expression of his face. 
After a moment he awoke, to gaze at me with 
those illumining brown eyes as if to impart 
his dream; but with a smile of kindliness 
wrinkling up his eyes he only said: "I shall 
miss you." 

I thanked him for his interest in me, and, 
as the sun hovered over Monte Solaro in the 
west, bade him "good-evening," but lightly 
called back, as I descended the chapel steps, 
"I haven't gone yet!" 

I went down over the ruins some three 
hundred yards, and turned aside from the 
path once more to enjoy the extended view 
of the sea and island from the top of the old 
lighthouse perched on the cliff over the sea. 
Climbing up, I sat there some time, content to 
inhale the gracious air, and, relaxed into a 
brown-study, to follow the wake of the sun 
as it led westward toward home and you, 
128 



when 1 distinctly heard a clear, bell-like voice 
exclaiming : " Oh, my beloved, come !" It was 
an appealing, assertive voice. I heard it not 
from without or from a distance, but as an 
articulate speech in my inner ear — at the 
spot in the brain where we do hear. 

Aroused, I wondered if my Seer was ex- 
ercising one of his occult gifts on me; or was 
I becoming nervously excited by my night 
watches with him on the mountain, and my 
"subjective" was juggling with my "ob- 
jective" in make-believes; or had I intercept- 
ed some wireless telegram designed for some 
wandering lover ? — for the voice was melodious, 
of timbre feminine! Really, would it not be 
something dizzily occult if one could only 
"hear what is whispered in the King's bed- 
chamber" ? 

I proceeded homeward as far as the little 
church of San Michele, which stands at the 
north side of my way, near the town, and had 
sat down on the rude steps leading up from 
the road toward the church, when there came 
up along the steep ascent from the town my 
lady of the pillar in San Stefano, also of the 
Chapel steps and kodak — and, was it not, I 
wonder, of the cavern of the Castiglione! 
129 



How comely she was in her simple, gray dress 
of woollen, on her head the ever-worn Capri 
scarf of varied and bright hue, and on her 
feet the white cotton shoes with soles of 
hempen cord which cling to the rocky paths! 
As she approached with hesitating pause of 
recognition and inquiry, I rose with hat raised 
in respectful salute, to which she, in the 
musical Italian aspirate, "II Signor!" re- 
sponded, with a gentle inclination of her head, 
while her dark eyes, timorously confident of 
friendliness, held my salutation in privilege, 
as she stood with questioning lips apart. 
She, evidently, had not halted in dalliance or 
without the authority of purpose. Now 
that she was near, facing me, I could see 
where the Greek had left his modelled grace 
of form and strength of profile to wander 
down the years. A fine sensibility played 
about the corners of her mouth and eyes, the 
former responsive to the latter. Imper- 
sonality was in the atmosphere of her, yet 
with a pervading individuality giving strength 
and purpose, as if she put aside herself in the 
thought which preoccupied her or the message 
she had in charge. I stood thus, hat in hand, 
not a little in awe, before this admirable 
130 



epitome of historic Capri, and was at a loss 
to imagine why so evidently she should wish 
to interview me. While the faintest blush 
hovered about her temples below her gray- 
black hair, she began: 

"You have been with our friend, the 
Hermit ?" 

She laid no emphasis on the "our," nor 
did she consciously use it as a confidence be- 
tween us, but it was as a relation granted as 
of course, an indefinite adjective. 

"Oh yes, I left him not a quarter of an 
hour ago. The descent is rapid," I answered. 

She continued: "Are you going away?" 

"Away ? From Capri, do you mean ? No." 

" I was told to meet you as you came down 
the way, and, if I could, ask you." 

Surprised, I interrupted with: "You were 
told to ask me! Who is so interested ? May 
I be curious enough to inquire who told you 
to question me ?" 

She smiled, and, with a lighting eye, an- 
swered: "He did." 

"When?" 

"Within the hour." 

"Where?" 

"While I was at my home in the town. He 
131 



told me to meet you here and ask. Shall I 
tell him you say, 'No'?" 

"Certainly, if you are going up to Villa 
Jovis, and will be so kind — " 

"But I do not have to go up to tell him," 
she broke in. 

Amazed, I stammered: "You — you do not 
have to go up to see him to — to tell him!" 

"No. Don't you know?" 

"Yes, I begin to understand. It is one of 
those things that 'eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard, prepared for — for them that — '" 

"Yes! yes!" With radiant face, she in- 
terrupted me. "He has been telling you." 

And, giving me a parting smile and bow, 
with springing step she passed on over the 
stone-paved way, and was at once lost to my 
sight in its near windings. 

Thereupon, directly, I began the steep 
descent from the little church, and in a five 
minutes of slipping and sliding down the 
pitching grade of the stone pavement entered 
one of those long arcades between the houses 
of the town where, on either side, shops and 
children do most abound, and soon was at 
my hotel. Heigho! Capri is not "so far 
away," after all. 

132 



I hope soon to unravel the knitting for your 
entertainment. Meanwhile I remain, as ever, 
Faithfully yours, 



U. S. A., April 2, 1 90-. 



My dear : 

"You may fill the blank." It is already 
full in my heart. 

This is the first day of our spring vacation, 
and it brought with it your dear letter of 
March 20th, while a few friends were with 
me at noon luncheon. The girls have just 
gone, and I have fled to my room, and in 
tears have read your every word. 

Yes, indeed, I do remember the "good 
times 

"'O' Life! we've had long together.' " 

And now, dear, I do not want to do anything 
in the world without you! I have suffered 
until I can endure it no longer. Every letter 
you have written has been to me a reproach 
as well as a gladness. The world has seemed 
133 



to be gliding from under me ever since vou 












b 



went away. I had lost gravity. 



b 



Some time ago, in one of vour letters, vou 



l &^> 



ers, y( 



asked what was my "bitter disappointment," 
and I was not brave enough to tell you. 

You know, vou and I always have been 
loval comrades; and, unconsciously, or, as you 
metaphysicians say, "subjectively," I always 
must have felt that oneness of thought and 
sympathy with you which, ever since your 
departure "for rest from worrisome work," 
as vou gavlv put it, has come home to me as a 
possible loss most unbearable until I have 
become jealous of vour Hermit even. 

Sincerity is evidenced by confession, and 
that is repentance. You alone can give me 
absolution. 

"Mr. Call," as you have been pleased to 

name him, caught my fancy as something 

new. He was evidently in earnest in his 

j 

court, and I believed him — one of the "some 
I have believed." Yet when he made his 
avowal, a few days before you left for Europe, 
I found, to mv surprise, / did not love him! 
I had fancied I did, and, frankly, this dis- 
covery that I did not was a "bitter disap- 
pointment"; for I was so fascinated with the 
134 



idea of being "in love" that when he ''pro- 
posed" I was dumfounded to find suddenly 
arise in me a deadly repulsion for him. A 
sudden realization of what true-love was took 
possession of me. He was an unknown 
quantity, an X, and I was no Y, and we could 
not equal anything. Not that there was any 
known objection to him! But an utter re- 
vulsion seized me. It was as if he, a stranger, 
had attacked me. I hated him abhorrently; 
partly, I suppose, because I so hated myself 
for my total lack of self-knowledge. I did, 
in truth, all the while, love. My love was so 
perfect and it so rounded my days with such 
peaceful assurance that, without asking my- 
self why, I found that I had treasured, not 
only your every word and look, but, with the 
tenderest care, as a matter of course, had pre- 
served every transient note, flower, book, 
picture, and all that, which you had given me 
in the gayety and frank cordiality of our 
comradeship. But this episode brought me 
to my senses. Oh, the pang of it when we 
parted in the sunshine at the gate! I had 
sinned against you — and myself. The Spirit 
of Love, grieved, was about to take its flight 
with you. 

l 35 



As we stood there in the glow of the parting 
day I felt the sun going down on my sin, and 
was speechless with the shame of it, knowing 
that you thought me disloyal to our unspoken 
past; yet you must have felt the truth! I 
know you did! I could not forgive myself 
enough to be frank with you — that was the 
"bitter disappointment," indeed. 

You would have pitied and forgiven me if 
you had known why, as you say, I turned 
from you and walked away so straight, 
without looking back, after asking you to 
write that I might know you were "all right." 
Lot's wife saved me! 

Now, dear, is it " all a puzzle " ? Does 
anybody "trouble" you? Now! won't you 
"speak for yourself, John"? Dearest, with 
all my love, I send you many messages from 
my strong and constant heart. 

Oh, my beloved, come! — when you will. 

Auf Wiedersehen. 

Faithfully yours, 



THE END 









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